Jerusalem1948 CHAP4

8Chapter
Four
JERUSALEM 1948
The Fall of the New City

1947-1950
Nathan Krystall
ntroduction
The United Nations resolved to partition Palestine and to internationalize

Jerusalem. The Arabs of Jerusalem attacked the Jews, who were forced to
defend themselves. Upon the first sound of gunfire, the wealthy Palestinian Arabs
abandoned their villas in West Jerusalem. Orders by the Arab leadership led to the
evacuation of the rest of the Palestinian Arab civilians. Despite British aid to the
Arabs, the few besieged Jews managed to hold out in Jerusalem, even against a
full-scale attack by the Arab countries, until a truce was declared. Left with
thousands of homeless Jewish immigrants on the one hand, and thousands of empty
Arab homes in West Jerusalem on the other, the Israeli government had no choice
but to house the one in the other.
So goes the conventional Zionist version of the fall of Arab West Jerusalem.
Another tendency, typified by Lynne Reid Banks in her book Torn Country, is to
negate the fact that Palestinian Arabs lived in West Jerusalem prior to 1948.1 While
some Palestinian Arabs have documented their struggle against the Zionist forces
in West Jerusalem, many of their stories have yet to be told.
I have attempted to construct a narrative of the events surrounding the fate of
Arab West Jerusalem between December 1947 and 1950 based on published firsthand accounts and secondary sources, supplemented by interviews. I have relied
heavily upon the published research and analyses of historians and other scholars
such as Henry Cattan, Walid Khalidi, Nur Masalha, Benny Morris, and Avi Shlaim.
The work of Arnon Golan, although he constructs history exclusively from the
conquerors perspective, proved extremely helpful in tracing the process of Israeli
settlement in West Jerusalem during the years in question.
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THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950
As an introduction, it is important to place 1948 Arab West Jerusalem in the

context of local, regional and international politics. In this task, I no doubt succumb
to simplicity for the sake of brevity.
Before 1948, the Palestinian Arab community of West Jerusalem, which
numbered about 28,000,2 was one of the most prosperous in the Middle East. West
Jerusalems Arabs lived mainly in that section of the citys southern part (in
mansional residential quarters from Talbiya down to the German Colony,3 the
Greek Colony,4 Qatamon, and Baq'a) and in its eastern part (in Musrara on the
northern side of the Old City and Deir Abu Tor on its southern end). The
approximately 95,000 Jews of West Jerusalem lived mainly in its northern and
western neighbourhoods, which were ringed on the west, going from north to south,
by the Arab villages of Lifta, Sheikh Badr, Deir Yasin, 'Ayn Karim, Malha, and
Beit Safafa.
Jerusalem as a whole was a central city both for Arabs and Jews in Palestine,
but in different ways. Situated between a nexus of Palestinian Arab towns, Jerusalem
was a hub of Arab economic, political, cultural, and social life. For Jews and Arabs
both Muslim and ChristianJerusalem had a deep religious significance. For many
secular Jews in Palestine, Jerusalem was neither politically, economically, nor
geographically focal. However, the leadership of the Zionist movement recognized
the citys deep religious and historical significance to Jewry. They saw that it would
provide an essential component in granting a future Jewish state legitimacy and
transforming it, to quote a contemporary journalist, into more than just an obscure
little state on the Levantine coast.5 The Zionist leadership also recognized that
controlling Jerusalem would drive a wedge into Arab Palestine.
Still, Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion, who was responsible for
his organizations policy on Jerusalem, was cautious in mapping out designs on the
city, knowing that any hint of Jewish control over what is widely regarded as the
holy city would elicit a backlash from the Christian West. The 1937 Peel
Commission, a forerunner of the UN partition plan, made clear Western desire for
proprietorship over Jerusalem and sought to permanently instate Britain as the
guardian of Jerusalem because of the overriding necessity of keeping the sanctity
of Jerusalem and Bethlehem inviolate and of ensuring safe and free access to them
for all the world.6 It has been suggested that the significant presence of Christian
Arabs in the city prevented Ben-Gurion and his colleagues from exchanging with
each other the kind of secret but explicit proposals for population transfer from
Jerusalem that they planned for other areas earmarked for a future Jewish state.7
Nonetheless, Zionist leaders viewed a Jewish demographic majority in Jerusalem
as a matter of utmost concern, because they believed that it would justify their
claims and safeguard their interests in the city. Their intensive immigration efforts
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JERUSALEM 1948
were such that, by 1947, the population of the area demarcated by the UN partition
plan for a corpus separatum, or international zone, which included both Jerusalem
and Bethlehem, comprised 100,000 Jews, 65,000 Muslims, and 40,000 Christians.8
Land ownership in the city area that would become West Jerusalem following the
1948 war was as follows: 33.69 percent Arab individually-owned property; 30.04
percent Jewish-owned property; 15.21 percent by other residents; 2.47 percent state
land; and 18.59 percent roads and railways.9
In agreeing to the UN partition plan, which stipulated that the citys residents
would decide its fate after ten years by referendum ballot, the Jewish Agency
expected further large-scale Jewish immigrationmainly of European holocaust
survivorsto swing the future vote in favor of Jerusalems inclusion in the Jewish
state.10 Some historians conclude that the Jewish Agencys concession to the plan
for a corpus separatum was tactical in that they counted on the Arab leaderships
rejection of the plan.11 In the event that the UN failed to impose internationalization,
the Jewish Agency leaders further reasoned, they would be justified in annexing
West Jerusalem.12 By December 1947, they were convinced that only Jerusalem
could be the capital of Israel.13
Between September and November, 1947, according to Francis Ofner, a
journalist in Jerusalem, Jewish Agency experts claimed that most Arabs in Palestine
preferred co-existence to violence.14 Still, a majority of the leaders of Palestinian
Arab political parties totally opposed the partition plan and its accompanying
proposal to internationalize Jerusalem. According to the partition plan, the Jewish
state, in which Jews at the time owned 1.67 million dunums out of a total area of 15
million dunums, would comprise 54 percent of Palestine, 55 percent of whose
population would be Jewish. 500,000 Arabs40 percent of the total Palestinian
Arab populationwithin this area would become minority subjects of the Jewish
state. In the Arab state would reside 725,000 Arabs and 10,000 Jews.15 Palestinian
Arabs saw that partition was, in Walid Khalidis words, Zionist in conception and
tailored to meet Zionist needs and demands.16 More recent revelations by historians
proffer additional reasons for Palestinian Arabs, with the benefit of hindsight, to
have been apprehensive about the plan, namely the fact that the other major players
in Palestinethe Jewish Agency, King Abdullah, and Britainhad no intention
of allowing a Palestinian Arab state to come into being.
In his book Collusion Across the Jordan, Avi Shlaim details the secret meetings
and agreements between the Jewish Agency and King Abdullah of Transjordan to
peacefully coordinate the partition of Palestine. Only a few days before the partition
vote, King Abdullah and Golda Meir agreed that the part of Palestine designated
an Arab state would be annexed by Transjordan, and that Transjordans Arab Legion
would not cross the boundaries demarcated for the Jewish state.17 Jerusalem, since
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it was set apart as a corpus separatum, was not covered by this agreement.18 Shlaim
concludes that fighting broke out in and around Jerusalem between Israeli and
Arab Legion forces during the 1948 war precisely because their leaders had not
reached an understanding regarding the city, while elsewhere in Palestine the two
sides exhibited mutual restraint.19 Shlaim also indicates that King Abdullah, given
nominal command over all Arab forces in the war, wrecked the Arab Leagues
plan for a unified invasion of Palestine in order to further his ambition of expanding
his kingdom.20
Other member nations of the Arab League were well aware that Palestinian
Arabs who lived in areas of Jewish demographic preponderance, like West
Jerusalem, faced grave danger. The organization established a committee to aid
their defense following Britains decision in October 1947 to eventually withdraw
from Palestine.21 Still, the committee was slow in mobilizing assistance. It was
criticized for basing itself in Damascus, not Jerusalem, and for having only a small
proportion of Palestinian Arabs among its leadership.22
Both Arab and Jewish military experts concluded that, in the event of a conflict,
the Jewish forces would defeat those of the Arabs.23 The Arab Legion was the only
Arab force capable of presenting a serious threat to the Haganah, the Jewish army
described by one of its high-ranking officers as one of the largest and best-trained
underground armies in modern history.24 Much of the Legions effectiveness,
however, was neutralized by King Abdullahs understandings with the Zionists
and by the armys reliance on British commanders and supplies.
The Arab Legion was commanded by John Bagot Glubb, who Shlaim describes
as an imperial proconsul receiving direct orders from both King Abdullah and
London.25 British policymakers actively encouraged the Transjordanian option:
the partition of Palestine between the Zionists and the Hashemites.26 Britain sought
to continue to wield influence in Palestine and decided that this could best be
achieved via a state controlled by King Abdullah instead of one governed by
Palestinian Arabs.27 Contrary to popular Zionist opinion, Britain did not try to
sabotage the birth of a Jewish state in 1948 and was at the time primarily interested
in expediting the safe withdrawal of its Mandate administration and troops.28 The
United States, eager to thwart Soviet influence in the region, generally backed
Britains policy in Palestine and increasingly took the lead in championing Zionist
aspirations. The first major instance of American intervention on behalf of Zionism
came with the partition vote on November 29, 1947, which would likely have
failed were it not for the heavy pressure that the Truman administration exerted
upon UN member nations.29
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JERUSALEM 1948
Outbreak of Fighting in Jerusalem

Immediately following the UN resolution to partition Palestine, fighting between
Zionist and Palestinian Arab forces began in and around Jerusalem. To protest the
resolution, the Arab Higher Committee (AHC) called Palestinian Arabs out on a
three-day general strike. As part of this strike, on December 1, Jerusalem Arabs
staged a militant demonstration that led to the burning and looting of Jewish-owned
shops in the Mamillah mercantile district of West Jerusalem. According to some
reports, the British police officers at the scene were indifferent; according to others,
they actively participated by breaking store locks with crowbars and gunfire.30 By
most accounts, the rioting by Palestinian Arabs in Mamillah was the spontaneous
act of individuals, and not prearranged. However, the Irgun Zvai Leumi (Irgun)
and Lehi (Stern Gang) responded swiftly and with lethal force. Describing this
sequence of events in a December 13, 1947 communiqu to London, Sir Alan
Cunningham, the British High Commissioner to Palestine, wrote:
The initial Arab outbreaks were spontaneous and unorganized and
were more demonstrations of displeasure at the UN decision than
determined attacks on Jews. The weapons initially employed were
sticks and stones and had it not been for Jewish recourse to firearms,
it is not impossible that the excitement would have subsided and
little loss of life been caused. This is more probable since there is
reliable evidence that the Arab Higher Committee as a whole and
the Mufti in particular, although pleased at the strong response to
the strike call, were not in favor of serious outbreaks.31
In their review of the fighting during December 1947, the heads of the Arab
Division of the Jewish Agencys Political Department, in an early January 1948
meeting with Ben-Gurion and the Haganah commanders, severely criticized
Haganah attacks on Romeima and Silwan in Jerusalem. They cited these attacks
as examples of how, in December 1947, Haganah units carried out operations which,
in Benny Morris words, tended to widen rather than curtail the area of hostilities
into hitherto peaceful zones.32 Two Irgun bombings outside the Old City around
the turn of the yearone at the Damascus Gate and the other at the Jaffa Gate
killed dozens of Palestinian Arabs.33
Palestinian Arab attacks in December consisted primarily of sniping at Jewish
vehicles on the road leading from Tel Aviv into Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the spiral
of retaliation and counter-retaliation rapidly sank into the mire of open warfare.
Both the Jewish and Arab leaders of Jerusalem strove to mobilize their
constituents for war. For Jerusalems Arabs this was a painfully slow process,
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hampered by the paucity of trained soldiers, lack of funds, poor access to modern
weaponry, and a fragmented leadership. As Abdullah Budeiri, one of the few
Jerusalem Arabs with professional soldiering experience at the time, noted: The
partition resolution came as a big shock to most of us. We expected the partition
vote to fail and had made no preparations for war.34
The main Arab force in and around Jerusalem before May 1948 was the Jihad
Muqqadas (Holy Struggle), a semi-irregular fighting force led by the widely popular
local leader 'Abd al-Qadir al-Huseini, which commanded about 380 men in the
city itself and another 250 in its rural environs. There were also some 100 to 150
fighters of the Arab League-sponsored Liberation Army, commanded by Fawzi
Qawuqji, as well as volunteers of the Manko Company, a contingent of irregulars
financed by Haj Ibrahim Manko. Altogether, the Arab forces commanded less than
1,000 full-time fighters in the Jerusalem area.35 There were also dozens of parttime troops, who would rally to help ward off a Zionist offensive or participate in
a nearby Arab attack and return home after a few hours.36
In most cases the weapons held by the Arab fighters were antiquated and in
short supply. Abdullah Budeiri remembered perusing the Old Citys condiment
stores, which doubled as gun shops: I even saw a weapon for sale from the last
century that was marked British East India Company.37 A Beit Safafa villager
recalled an old Italian-made gun supplied by 'Abd al-Qadir al-Huseini: You could
press the trigger one hundred times, and the gun would only fire once, with a burst
of flames so bright that I could not use it at night for fear that I would be spotted by
the enemy.38 The National Committee, an umbrella organization of the Arab
Jerusalem neighbourhood committees, dispatched representatives to Syria to buy
weapons, but only returned with fifty old guns.39
The quality and organization of the Arab forces was inconsistent. The Liberation
Army troops, according to Benny Morris, were militarily fairly useless [...] and at
loggerheads with the local Palestinian militiamen and population.40 Due to rivalries
and jealousies among Arab leaders, communication between the forces was poor.
Animosity between the Mufti of Jerusalem and the Arab League manifested itself in
the field as suspicions between 'Abd al-Qadir al-Huseini and Fawzi Qawuqji.41 In
late January 1948, AHC Secretary and Jerusalem National Committee leader Husein
al-Khalidi complained to the Mufti in Cairo that 'Abd al-Qadir al-Huseinis troops
were not coordinating with the local committees, creating, in Khalidis words,
indescribable confusion.42 Motivationally, many Palestinian Arabs were willing
to fight to the bitter end to defend their neighbourhoods and villages; however, they
seldom organized collective defensive or offensive strategies.43 Another bane for the
Arab forces was the crude level of medical care: We lost lives from treatable wounds;
someone would be shot in the hand, and it would be amputated, recounted Budeiri.44
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JERUSALEM 1948
The Zionist forces, due to their high level of preparation, were able to mobilize
a far more effective fighting force, far more quickly, than the Palestinian Arabs.
Only eight days after the partition vote, the Jerusalem Haganah had mobilized 500
men and women on a full-time basis. Most had received some form of military
training.45 By May 1948, the Haganah fielded two brigades under a unified
command in the Jerusalem area: the Etzioni or Sixth Brigade, with some 2,750
troops, in the city itself; and the Palmachs Harel or Tenth Brigade, of about the
same strength, in the environs.46 Many Haganah soldiers had served in British
units in World War II, and others had received special training in guerilla tactics
and night fighting. As already witnessed, Irgun and Lehi fighters, who were grouped
disproportionately in Jerusalem, were trained and prepared for conflict from the
earliest stages of the fighting.47
Hagit Shlonskys experience illustrates how the Zionist forces in Jerusalem, as
elsewhere in Palestine, had prepared themselves for the outbreak of war. She was
approached and recruited by the Haganah while still in high school in Jerusalem,
an occurrence that students considered an honor. Once a week throughout 1947,
she and other Haganah youth met after school in a secret location and learned how
to use weapons. We were prepared for a war, Shlonsky remembered. We were
sure that the Arabs who surrounded us would attack and that we would have to
defend ourselves.48
The highly motivated Zionist forces had been indoctrinated with the idea that
nationhood transcends the individual, the family, and all other considerations. The
Hebrew University was a fertile recruiting ground. Tikva Honig-Parnass, then a
student of seventeen, recalled her enlistment:
I enlisted in the Haganah already in November. It was well known
on campus who was a member of the Haganah, and a friend and I
went to the student office and joined up. Most students were
members, and enlisting was the culmination of everything I had
been brought up to believe in. We had fought to achieve what we
had, it was now in danger, and it was up to me to protect it. In that
discourse there was no notion of attacking or being the aggressors,
only defending ourselves and what we had built.49
Although the Zionist forces were generally well centralized and unified, friction
was always present between the Haganah and the more ideologically right-wing
Irgun and Lehi. The latter forces enjoyed widespread support in Jerusalem, especially
in the poorer, predominantly Mizrahi neighbourhoods where people had less contact
with the mainstream, predominantly Ashkenazi Zionist leadership.50 Still, the three
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groups achieved notable operational coordination. In a dispatch to London on

December 15, 1947, British High Commissioner Cunningham detailed the close
cooperation between the Haganah and what he called the dissident groups of the
Irgun and the Lehi.51 In analyzing the relationship between the actions of the three
forces, Simha Flapan discerned that, following Irgun and Lehi raids and bombings,
a pattern became clear, for in each case the Arabs retaliated, then the Haganah
while always condemning the actions of the Irgun and Lehijoined in with an
inflaming counterretaliation.52
'Abd al-Qadir al-Huseini soon realized that his forces were insufficient to conquer
Jewish settlements and neighbourhoods, so he concentrated his efforts on severing
Jewish communication lines to Jerusalem. He and his troops, along with the sporadic
assistance of people from nearby villages, consistently and successfully ambushed
Jewish convoys. By March, very few convoys were able to pass through Bab alWad, the entrance through the hills to Jerusalem. Inside the city of Jerusalem, alHuseinis fighters launched a string of bombings against Jewish, primarily civilian,
targets. In February and March, dozens of Jews were killed by TNT-laden cars and
trucks on Ben Yehuda Street, the Jewish Agency building and at the offices of the
Palestine Post newspaper.
Concerning British behavior towards the Zionist and Palestinian Arab forces,
historians have analyzed the phenomenon in Palestine as a whole but have not
devoted adequate attention to the special case of Jerusalem. Consistent with
elsewhere in Palestine, it seems that the British had no clear-cut policy in Jerusalem
towards the end of their Mandate. Decisions to assist or refuse to help either side
were apparently often at the discretion of the British officer on hand. Arms and
information were provided through the back door to both Haganah and Palestinian
Arab forces. Some have asserted the bias of British soldiers because they assisted
in repulsing Arab attacks on Jewish neighbourhoods, as occurred in Mekor Hayim,
in fixing the water pipelines flowing to Jewish neighbourhoods after they were
exploded by Arab militia and in handing over key installations to Zionist forces.53
Others have countered with examples of British non-intervention in the face of
attacking Arab forces, as with the constant ambushes on Jewish convoys in the
Jerusalem corridor. Still others believe that the British, while concentrating on the
withdrawal of their administration and troops, were content to let Jew and Arab
fight it out among themselves. All of the viewpoints appear valid in part. As will
be seen, however, British non-intervention in West Jerusalem eventually enabled
the Zionists to implement their strategy of driving out Palestinian Arabs and
conquering their neighbourhoods.54 Another key factor was that the British
prevented the Arab armies from attacking Haganah positions in Jerusalem and
elsewhere before the end of the Mandate.55
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JERUSALEM 1948
The Initial Evacuation of Arab Neighbourhoods

With the outbreak of fighting, Jews began to leave the mixed neighbourhoods
where they, for the most part, were renting homes from Arab landlords. The Haganah
saw this as a serious problem, for it regarded each neighbourhood as a military
post, and its resident population as a reserve fighting force. Its strategy for dealing
with Jewish abandonment was to forbid all Jews to leave their area of residence
without permission. Furthermore, the Jewish neighbourhood committees compelled
residents to continue to pay tax, even after they evacuated, and refused to take
responsibility for the property left behind.56 But when these measures proved
ineffectual and Jews continued to depart, Israel Amir, the Haganah commander in
Jerusalem, decided to drive Arabs completely out of these neighbourhoods and to
push them from a few small enclaves in predominantly Jewish neighbourhoods.
The Haganah first tried to pressure Arab residents to vacate these areas through
psychological warfare. Haganah members issued threats via posters, notes, and
phone calls to the Arab neighbourhood leaders. Next, in order to create a general
air of insecurity, Haganah raiding parties infiltrated the neighbourhoods to sever
phone lines and electricity wires, throw hand grenades, and fire into the air.57 In
addition, they blew up buildings on the pretext that they served as bases for Arab
military actions.
Clearing Lifta, Romeima and Sheikh Badr of their Arab residents was given
top priority, as these villages were strategically located at the citys entrance on the
main road to Tel Aviv. The Haganah and Irgun waged a series of attacks on Lifta,
including a machine gun and grenade attack at a cafe on December 28, 1947 that
left seven people dead. Most residents left the village very soon thereafter, and the
rest departed after Zionist forces blew up several houses.58 Arabs in Romeima and
Sheikh Badr were forced out of their homes in early January 1948.59 The course of
events leading to Sheikh Badrs evacuation are described in a British intelligence
report:
After a day of Arab sniping, the Haganah, on 11 January, took the
matter into their own hands and blew up the house of Hajj Sulayman
Hamini, the village mukhtar. A second raid followed on 13 January,
with some 20 houses being damaged, and the suburb, after receiving
a Haganah order, was evacuated. On 16 January, Sheikh Badr was
looted by a Jewish crowd.60
The Haganahs bombing campaign included a devastating explosion in
Qatamons Semiramis Hotel on January 4, 1948, which killed twenty-six civilians.
Most of the dead were members of two Christian Arab families of Jerusalem; one
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was a Spanish diplomat.61 The Haganah, hoping to justify the bombing, claimed
that the hotel doubled as an Arab military installation. However, a British Mandate
investigation into the bombing found the allegation entirely without foundation,
and described the operation as the wholesale murder of innocent people.62 Even
a Jewish Agency report describing the bombing and its impact belied the Haganah
claim:
The Arabs living in the prosperous western district of Qatamon
began evacuating their homes after the Haganah bombing of the
Semiramis Hotel on the night of 4-5 January 1948. The Haganah
suspected, mistakenly, that the hotel served as the headquarters of
the local irregulars. Several Arab families, and the Spanish consul
in the city, died in the explosion, and a sharp dispute broke out
inside the Haganah and with the British authorities...The bombing
caused major panic in Qatamon. Many flats were evacuated, but ...
only by women, the old and children. The young men stayed.63
Hala Sakakini, then a young woman living in Qatamon, described the mayhem
in her neighbourhood following the Hotel Semiramis bombing:
All day long you could see people carrying their belongings and
moving from their houses to safer ones in Qatamon or to another
quarter altogether. They reminded us of pictures we used to see of
European refugees during the war. People were simply panicstricken. The rumor spread that leaflets had been dropped by the
Jews saying that they would make out of Qatamon one heap of
rubble. Whenever we saw people moving away we tried to
encourage them to stay. We would tell them: You ought to be
ashamed to leave. This is just what the Jews want you to do; you
leave and they occupy your houses and then one day you will find
that Qatamon has become another Jewish quarter!64
The Haganah proceeded to bomb many private Arab residences in Qatamon.65
Sami Hadawi, who also lived in Qatamon, said that although fourteen buildings
were blown up around his house, he remained in the neighbourhood.66 Another
resident recalled that, after the Semiramis bombing, his father prepared the family
to leave for a safer place. Ibrahim Abu Dayyeh, the head of the Qatamon resistance,
approached his father and entreated him to stay, saying that if his familyone of
the few Muslim families in the neighbourhoodleft, more would follow suit. So
they held on in the neighbourhood for the time being.67
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JERUSALEM 1948
The situation of Jerusalems Arabs was dire. On January 13, 1948, Husein alKhalidi informed the Mufti of the crisis in Jerusalem: The position here is very
difficult. There are no people, no discipline, no arms, and no ammunition. Over
and above this, there is no tinned food and no foodstuffs. The black market is
flourishing. The economy is destroyed ... This is the real situation, there is no flour,
no food ... Jerusalem is emptying out.68 In January, practically all the wealthy
Palestinian Arab residents of West Jerusalem fled from the neighbourhoods of
Qatamon, Deir Abu Tor, and Baq'a.69 They had the means to travel and reside
outside Jerusalem or abroad and intended to return when the fighting subsided.
The Haganah and Lehi also carried out military operations against
neighbourhoods and villages like Beit Safafa, Silwan, and Sheikh Jarah. Sherut
Yediot (SHY) reports painted a picture of despair, fear, and abandonment among
these Arab villages and also among front-line neighbourhoods like Musrara.70
Concomitant with the Haganahs campaign to clear Arabs from their West
Jerusalem neighbourhoods was the Jewish settling of their homes. The first area to
be settled was Sheikh Badr by those Jews who had been displaced from their
neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, such as Shimon HaTzadik. Prior to this, as
mentioned in the above British intelligence report, the village had been looted by
Jewish residents of Nahlaot. By January 28, twenty-five Jewish families had moved
into Sheikh Badr.71 Golan describes how various committees established by the
Haganah and the Jewish Agency pressured these families into settling the
neighbourhood:
It was not easy for the Housing Committee to convince [the Jewish
refugees from Shimon HaTzadik] to leave the Kol Yisrael Chaverim
institutions [where they were sheltered] and to be housed in Sheikh
Badr [...] According to the testimony of Chaya Buton, a Housing
Committee worker, sanctions were imposed on them like cutting
off support given them by the Social Department of the Community
Committee, and when that did not work they were forcibly loaded
onto trucks and transferred to Sheikh Badr.72
Ben-Gurion keenly followed the dual process of evacuation and settlement. On
February 5, 1948, he ordered the new Haganah commander of Jerusalem, David
Shaltiel, to conquer and settle Jews in Arab districts.73 Appearing before the Mapai
Council two days later, Ben-Gurion reported:
From your entry into Jerusalem, through Lifta, Romeima ... there
are no Arabs. One hundred percent Jews. Since Jerusalem was
destroyed by the Romans, it has not been so Jewish as it is now. In
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many Arab neighbourhoods in the west one sees not a single Arab.
I do not assume that this will change ... What has happened in
Jerusalem ... is likely to happen in many parts of the country ... in
the six, eight or ten months of the campaign there will certainly be
great changes in the composition of the population of the country.74
An estimated 30,000 Palestinian Arabs evacuated Jerusalem, Haifa and some
villages near the Mediterranean coast between January and March 1948.75 By
March, the neighbourhoods of Jerusalemexcept for the Jewish Quarter in the
otherwise Arab Old Citywere exclusively Arab or Jewish, with virtually no
communication between them.76
Plan Dalet and Operation Nachshon

As mentioned, during the first months of 1948 the local forces of Palestinian
irregulars and militiamen, led by 'Abd al-Qadir al-Huseini, concentrated their efforts
on cutting off Jewish Jerusalem from the coastal plain by attacking Jewish convoys
travelling along the narrow Jerusalem corridor. In March they also began to sabotage
the water supplies flowing to the Jewish neighbourhoods and to surround the city.77
By late March, Jewish Jerusalem was effectively under siege, deprived of food,
water, and basic services.78
The Haganahs Operation Nachshon, designed to break the siege, began on
April 6, 1948. This operation was in the framework of Plan Dalet, which had been
in preparation since 1944.79 The largest Jewish offensive to date, Plan Dalet aimed
to enlarge the boundaries allotted to the Jewish state and simultaneously conquer
dozens of villages from which the Palestinian Arab inhabitants would be expelled.80
According to Benny Morris, Operation Nachshon was a watershed, characterized
by an intention and effort to clear a whole area, permanently, of Arab villages and
hostile or potentially hostile Arab villagers.81 During Operation Nachshon, Yitzhak
Rabin was an officer in the Palmachs Harel Brigade whose mission was to raze
the Palestinian villagesfrom Beit Mahsir in the west to Qalunya and Qastal in
the eastwhich 'Abd al-Qadir al-Huseini relied upon for support.82 Rabin later
said, By not leaving stone on stone and driving all the people away, and without
those villages, the Arab bands were not going to be able to operate effectively
anymore.83 Tikva Honig-Parnass, a Palmach soldier who participated in Operation
Nachshon, recalled her commander saying that the Zionist positions in and around
Jerusalem could only hold out for another three weeks. To her, Operation Nachshon
was totally justified on defensive grounds. They are attacking us. They are
disconnecting us. So we have to wipe them out, she remembers thinking.84 Most
Zionist soldiers, it would appear, saw Operation Nachshon as a purely defensive
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JERUSALEM 1948
measure and were oblivious to the existence of prior plans to go on the offensive
with the goal of territorial expansion.
The Jewish Agency leadership, however, had long prepared for, and even counted
on, such a window of opportunity to widen the Jerusalem corridor. On February 6,
1948, Ben-Gurion had told the Mapai Party Council that without populating the
Jerusalem mountains and the hills [surrounding] the coastal plains ... I am doubtful
whether we would be able to maintain the link with Jerusalem, and therefore that
it is necessary to be in [to settle] the mountains. When one audience member
objected that we have no land there [in the hills and mountains], Ben-Gurion
replied: The war will give us the land. The concept of ours and not ours are
peace concepts, only, and in war they lose their whole meaning.85
Prior to Operation Nachshon, according to accounts written by Nathan Weinstock
and jointly by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Haganah intelligence
approached Fawzi al-Qawuqji, the Liberation Army commander, and received his
assurance that he would not come to the aid of 'Abd al-Qadir al-Huseinis forces.86
During an attempt on April 7 to retake the village of Qastal, al-Huseini was killed,
resulting in a huge blow to Arab morale. On the impact of al-Huseinis death, alQawuqji wrote: The death of 'Abd al-Qadir al-Huseini has caused confusion in
the whole area.87
The Deir Yasin Massacre

As their contribution to Operation Nachshon, the Irgun and Lehi planned an
attack on the village of Deir Yasin, strategically located a mile west of the Jerusalem
suburbs, close to the highway leading into the Jerusalem corridor. Deir Yasin was
one of several Arab villages in the area that had already concluded non-belligerency
agreements with Jewish Jerusalem.88 Deir Yasins particular agreement was made
in February 1948, and the villagers had been assured that, in return for their readiness
to collaborate with the Haganah, they and their village would be spared.89 In
keeping with their part of the bargain, Deir Yasin residents had driven out an Arab
military group that had wanted to use their village as a base.90
In his book The Palestinian Catastrophe, Michael Palumbo provides evidence
that the Irgun and Lehi not only intended to vanquish the village but to commit a
massacre. Benzion Cohen, the Irgun commander of the raid, noted that at the preattack meeting the majority was for liquidation of all the men in the village and
any others found that opposed us, whether it be old people, women and children.91
Also, according to the Irgun officer Yehuda Lapidot, the Lehi forwarded a proposal
to liquidate the residents of the village after the conquest to show the Arabs what
happens when the Irgun and Stern Gang [Lehi] set out together on an operation.92
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There is record of prior Haganah knowledge of the attack. The following memo
was sent from the Jerusalem Haganah Commander David Shaltiel to Mordechai
Ranaan and Yehoshua Zetler, Jerusalem commanders of the Irgun and Lehi
respectively:
I learn that you plan an attack on Deir Yasin. I wish to point out
that the capture of Deir Yasin and its holding are one stage in our
general plan. I have no objection in you carrying out the operation
provided you are able to hold the village.93
Shaltiel implored them to totally conquer and occupy the village at the first
attempt because a second attack on a fortified Deir Yasin would cost many more
Jewish lives.94 The Haganah provided rifles and hand grenades for the action,
which was code-named Operation Unity as a symbol of cooperation between the
three Zionist forces.95 Altogether, 120 men took part in the initial attack on April
9, 1948, which Jacques de Reynier, the International Red Cross Chief Delegate in
Jerusalem, reported was without any military reason or provocation of any kind.96
According to Meir Pa'il, a Haganah officer who said he joined the attack as an
observer, the Zionists encountered resistance from a dozen villagers using old
rifles. The attackers had only captured the eastern half of the village, and Pa'il
summoned help from the Haganah. A Palmach platoon soon arrived and easily
occupied the rest of the village, after which the Palmach troops withdrew.97 The
Palestine Post of April 13, 1948 simply stated that the Palmach provided covering
fire during Operation Unity while, according to Irgun and Lehi sources, a Palmach
unit shelled Deir Yasin with a mortar.98 After the Palmach units withdrawal,
apparently, the massacre began.99
Benny Morris tersely summarizes the massacre as follows:
After a prolonged firefight, in which Arab family after family were
slaughtered, the dissidents rounded up many of the remaining
villagers, who included militiamen and unarmed civilians of both
sexes, and children, and murdered dozens of them.100
However, many of the scores of Deir Yasin villagers massacred were reportedly
killed following the firefight.101 A survivor, Fahmi Zeidan, described the slaughter
of his family:
The Jews ordered all our family to line up against the wall and they
started shooting us. I was hit in the side, but most of us children
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were saved because we hid behind our parents. The bullets hit my
sister Kadri [four] in the head, my sister Sameh [eight] in the cheek,
my brother Mohammed [seven] in the chest. But all the others with
us against the wall were killed: my father, my mother, my
grandfather and grandmother, my uncles and aunts and some of
their children.102
Haleem Eid, then thirty years old, said she saw a man shoot a bullet into the
neck of my sister Salhiyeh who was nine months pregnant. Then he cut her stomach
open with a butchers knife. She said that another woman witnessing the same
scene, Aiesch Radwas, was killed when she tried to remove the unborn infant from
the dead mothers womb.103 Many survivors described the savagery of killing,
rape, and looting. In addition, Irgun and Lehi fighters dynamited many houses.
According to Benny Morris, the horrors of the massacre were amplified and
exaggerated in the Arab retelling.104 However, another Israeli historian, Uri
Milstein, states that fabrications stemmed mainly from various elements on the
Jewish side.105 Still, it is hard to conjure up more savage tales than those of the
survivors themselves. Assistant Inspector General Richard C. Catling of the Criminal
Investigation Division included one such shocking account in a report he filed on
April 15, 1948 to the British Palestine Government:
On 14 April at 10 am, I visited Silwan village accompanied by a
doctor and a nurse from the Government Hospital in Jerusalem
and a member of the Arab Womens Union. We visited many houses
in this village in which approximately some two to three hundred
people from Deir Yasin village are housed. I interviewed many of
the women folk in order to glean some information on any atrocities
committed in Deir Yasin but the majority of these women are very
shy and reluctant to relate their experiences especially in matters
concerning sexual assault and they need great coaxing before they
will divulge any information. The recording of statements is
hampered also by the hysterical state of the women who often break
down many times whilst the statement is being recorded. There is,
however, no doubt that many sexual atrocities were committed by
attacking Jews. Many young schoolgirls were raped and later
slaughtered. Old women were also molested. One story is current
concerning a case in which a young girl was literally torn in two.
Many infants were also butchered and killed. I also saw one old
woman who gave her age as one hundred and four, who had been
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severely beaten about the head by rifle butts. Women had bracelets
torn from their arms and rings from their fingers and parts of some
of the womens ears were severed in order to remove earrings.106
According to a former Lehi intelligence officer, one attacker took two Arabs,
tied them back to back, and placed a dynamite finger between their heads, then
shot at the dynamite and their heads exploded.107
Jacques de Reynier arrived at Deir Yasin the day after the massacre. The victims
corpses were strewn about, and the village was still occupied by the Irgun and Lehi
fighters, who were engaged in what de Reynier called cleaning up operations or,
plainly speaking, executions. De Reyniers assessment of the incident at Deir Yasin
was that the villagers had been deliberately massacred in cold blood for, as I
observed for myself, this gang was admirably disciplined and only acted under
orders.108
Survivors of the massacre were paraded, hands forced above their heads, through
the streets of Jewish-held Jerusalem, said Eliyahu Arieli, the commander of the
Haganah force which moved into Deir Yasin following the massacre.109 Meir Pail,
the Haganah observer, recounted that, after parading a group of twenty-five men,
Irgun and Lehi members put them in a line in some kind of quarry, and shot
them.110 According to Arieli, All of the killed, with very few exceptions, were
old men, women and children [...] the dead we found were all unjust victims and
none of them had died with a weapon in their hands.111 After the massacre, Zionist
forces took the bodies of the victims to Deir Yasins rock quarry, poured gasoline
on them and set them alight.112
The Haganah command distanced itself from the massacre to maintain the image
of a force committed to purity of arms and avoid the risk of moral dissonance
within its ranks. As former Palmach soldier Tikva Honig-Parnass recalls, We in
the Haganah saw this as an inhumane, terrible act by the right wing. It wasnt us,
we told ourselves. It wasnt part of any plan. It was those right-wing devils. Not by
us, the pure. I never had any doubt about our purity.113 On April 10, 1948, Jerusalem
Haganah commander Shaltiel issued a communiqu in effect disclaiming Haganah
participation inand implying that he had no prior knowledge ofthe attack:
This morning, the last Lehi and Etzel [Irgun] soldiers ran from
Deir Yasin and our soldiers entered the village. We were forced to
take command of the village after the splinter forces [Irgun and
Lehi members] opened a new enemy front and then fled, leaving
the western neighbourhoods of the city open to enemy attack.114
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Enraged by Shaltiels hypocrisy, Ranaan and Zetler made public his earlier memo
to them in which he approved the attack.115
In what they claimed was retaliation for Deir Yasin, Palestinian Arab fighters
attacked a Jewish medical convoy on its way to Hadassah hospital on Mount Scopus
on April 14.116 The convoy, which was ambushed in Sheikh Jarrah, included doctors,
nurses, Irgun fighters wounded at Deir Yasin, and Haganah escorts.117 The British
Army, though fully aware of the ensuing battle, waited six hours before
intervening.118 By then seventy-six Jews, including forty medical staff, had been
killed, some as they tried to escape their burning vehicles.119 Fourteen Arabs were
also shot dead.120
The Zionist Conquest and Looting of Qatamon

The Deir Yasin massacre terrorized the entire Palestinian Arab population,
particularly those living in and around Jerusalem. As Hala Sakakini of Qatamon
wrote:
Lately, ever since the massacre at Deir Yasin, we have been thinking
seriously of leaving Jerusalem. The most terrible stories have been
received from eyewitnesses who have escaped from this
unbelievable massacre. I never thought the Jews could be so cruel,
so barbarous, so brutal. Pregnant women and children were tortured
to death, young women were stripped naked, humiliated and driven
through the Jewish Quarters to be spit upon by the crowds. The
civilized Jews are not ashamed of their crime at all and we know
that they are capable of repeating it whenever and wherever possible.
One day, perhaps very soon, we may be forced to leave our house.
I dont like to think of it.121
De Reynier observed that a general terror was built up among the Arabs, a
terror astutely fostered by the Jews.122 Haganah radio repeated incessantly
Remember Deir Yasin as an ominous warning to Arab listeners. In addition,
loudspeaker vans broadcast messages in Arabic such as: Unless you leave your
homes the fate of Deir Yasin will be your fate.123
Despite the AHC National Committee of Jerusalems order to the Arab
population to stay put on pain of punishment, the massacre immediately provoked
a mass flight of Palestinian Arabs from Jerusalem and the surrounding villages.124
According to Morris, Deir Yasin probably had the most lasting effect of any single
event of the war in precipitating the flight of Arab villagers from Palestine.125
And Palumbo writes that the fear generated by the news of the massacre made
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many peasants vulnerable to intimidation when their village was invaded by Zionist
forces.126 While it is important to keep in mind the psychological impact of Deir
Yasin, it is also significant that many Palestinian Arabs did not budge or, when
possible, returned to their homes after a few days, as in the case of Beit Safafa.127
David Kroyanker remembers, as a child, witnessing the abandonment of Talbiya:
I lived not far from here [Talbiya]. Deir Yasin had a huge influence
on the evacuation of Talbiya. The Arabs were scared to death. They
left their meals on their tables and the Haganah requested people
in our neighbourhood to clean the houses so that Jews could move
into them. There really were meals still on the tables. The Arabs
thought it was a matter of two or three days before they would
return to their homes, as had happened in 1936 and 1939.128
However, return to the southwestern neighbourhoods of Jerusalem was perilous
due to fierce fighting.
In the wake of Operation Nachshon and the Deir Yasin massacre, the Haganah
General Command was poised to take control of West Jerusalem and much of East
Jerusalem, excluding the areas under British control. This was among the goals of
Operation Yevussi, carried out by the Haganahs Etzioni Brigade and Palmach
units as of April 27.
The neighbourhood of Qatamon lay at the center of Zionist plans to conquer
West Jerusalem. Qatamon was strategically located on a hill, and the Arab forces
knew that its fall would signify their defeat in West Jerusalem. As a precursor to its
attack on Qatamon, the Zionist forces subjected the neighbourhood to weeks of
heavy artillery shelling.129 In preparation for a big battle, on April 22 the Palestinian
National Committee of Jerusalem ordered its local branches to relocate all women,
children and elderly people from the neighbourhoods.130 The Battle of Qatamon,
which began on April 30, lasted for three days and resulted in the deaths of 150
Arabs.131 Following the neighbourhoods occupation, a Red Cross physician
discovered in a cave the bodies of a number of Arabs who had been killed. According
to the physician, a group of bodies was piled in a heap, including soldiers, women
and even a mule. A Haganah officer on the scene refused to help the doctor carry
away the bodies.132
The Zionist conquest of Qatamon was accompanied by widespread looting of
the neighbourhoods Arab homes. Many Palestinians who fled West Jerusalem
lost all their belongings. As UN Mediator Count Folke Bernadotte noted:
[...] while those who had fled in the early days of the conflict had
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been able to take with them some personal effects and assets, many
of the latecomers were deprived of everything except the clothes
in which they stood, and apart from their homes (many of which
were destroyed) lost all furniture and assets and even their tools of
trade.133
Some Qatamon residents stood and watched from a nearby vantage point as
their property was loaded onto trucks and driven off to an unknown destination.134
Hagit Shlonsky provided an eyewitness account of the Qatamon looting:
I remember the looting in Qatamon very well. I was a first aid
nurse stationed in the Beit Havra'a Etzion [military convalescence
center] in Qatamon. The convalescence center was located in two
large Arab buildings. One night a soldier took me out and showed
me around the neighbourhood. I was stunned by the beauty of the
houses. I went into one houseit was beautiful, with a piano, and
carpets, and wonderful chandeliers.
At the time my family lived in Rehavia on a street that was on the
way to other Jewish neighbourhoods from Qatamon. For days you
could see people walking by carrying looted goods. I would stare
through the window of our apartment and see dozens of people
walking past with the loot. This was connected to the visit I had
made with the soldier to the house in Qatamon because I knew
what treasures lay in those houses. I saw them walking by for days.
Not only soldiers, civilians as well. They were looting like mad.
They were even carrying dining tables. And it was in broad daylight,
so everyone could see.
One soldier wanted to please me, and brought me a handkerchief
and earrings. I was flattered, but he didnt tell me he had looted
them. He just brought them to me as a gift. When I showed them to
my father, he looked at me and said, Throw it away! How dare
you take anything! Only then I made the connection between those
people on the street and what the soldier had given me.
In our family, because my father was so outraged by the looting,
we all talked about it a lot. But otherwise I didnt hear about it from
anybody. It took many years till people started talking and writing
about it.135
On May 16, the Zionist forces took over Baq'a, an event described in his memoirs
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by John Rose, an Armenian Jerusalemite who remained in the neighbourhood:

There was no resistance of any sort; they just walked in, gradually
taking over buildings in strategic places. Nearly every house was
empty: set tables with plates of unfinished food indicated that the
occupants had fled in disarray, haste and fear. In some kitchens
cooking stoves had been left alight, reducing the ingredients of a
waiting meal to blackened remains.136
After the fall of the Arab neighbourhoods of West Jerusalem, only about 750
non-Jews remained in the area.137 Of these, many were Greeks who were allowed
to continue living in their houses in the German Colony and the Greek Colony.
Almost all the Arabsmost of whom were Christianwere concentrated by the
Jewish forces into Upper Baq'a.138
Later on, in June, Jewish residents of Jerusalem took advantage of a formal
cease-fire (described below) to loot the empty Arab homes in Baq'a. According to
John Rose, who was one of those confined to Baq'a:
Our movements were restricted but Jewish residents from the
western suburbs and elsewhere were allowed to circulate freely.
During this time looting of Arab houses started on a fantastic scale,
accompanied by wholesale vindictive destruction of property. First
it was the army who broke into the houses, searching for people
and for equipment that they could use. Next came those in search
of food, after which valuables and personal effects were taken. From
our verandah we saw horse-drawn carts as well as pick-up trucks
laden with pianos, refrigerators, radios, paintings, ornaments and
furniture, some wrapped in valuable Persian carpets [...] Safes with
money and jewelry were pried open and emptied. The loot was
transported for private use or for sale in West Jerusalem. To us this
was most upsetting. Our friends houses were being ransacked and
we were powerless to intervene.
[...] This state of affairs continued for months. Latecomers made
do with what remained to be pillaged. They pried off ceramic tiles
from bathroom walls and removed all electric switches and wiring,
kitchen gadgets, waterpipes and fittings. Nothing escaped: lofts and
cellars were broken into, doors and windows hacked down, floor
tiles removed in search of hidden treasures. Rooms were littered
with piles of rubbish and as winter set in rain poured into these
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derelict houses. At night the wind howled and the banging of

windows and doors echoed through the lifeless buildings, a haunting
sound in an already ghostly scene. It was unbearable to pass these
houses, so familiar, but now within six months become so strange,
with overgrown gardens, front doors and windows smashed or wide
open and above all void of their inhabitants. We lived in the middle
of a sea of destruction.139
The British Withdrawal and the Israeli Declaration of

Independence
On the third and fourth of May, the Arab Liberation Army pounded West Jerusalem
with heavy artillery, hitting Haganah positions, ammunition stores, and electricity
and water centers. Then the British intervened. Fawzi al-Qawuqji recorded: The
British warned that they would attack our guns with planes if we bombarded Jerusalem
a third time. He also mentioned that at the same time there were British armored
cars guarding Nabi Yaqub and Qalandia settlements [next to Jerusalem] all day.140
As the British prepared the final details for their departure from Palestine
scheduled for May 14, the UN attempted, albeit weakly, to step in to implement the
partition resolution. In late April, the UN Trusteeship Council proposed either
placing Jerusalem under international trusteeship or managing the city with a UNcontrolled force of 1,000 police. The AHC, wanting to avoid tacit recognition of
the partition plan, rejected both proposals.141 The AHC also shunned the UN
Commission for Palestine, established to administer Palestine in the transition period
after the Mandate.142 Still, unlike the Jewish Agency, the Arabs, including the
AHC, were interested in discussing the arrangement of a truce in Jerusalem. On
May 7, Arab League Secretary-General Azzam Pasha agreed with British High
Commissioner Sir Alan Cunningham to a limited truce in Jerusalem. When the
Jewish Agency refused to send high-ranking officials to discuss the truce with the
UN Consular Truce Commission, the commission imposed a cease-fire the next
day. The Jewish Agency then refused to negotiate to extend the truce, which only
lasted a few days.143 On May 14, UN representatives, including the Assistant
Principal Secretary of the Palestine Commission, Pablo de Azcarate, made repeated
efforts to telephone Jewish Agency officials in Jerusalem in the hope of mediating
a truce. The circumstances are related in his book Mission in Palestine:
The Jews, already perfectly organized, were carrying out
methodically their plan to seize the whole of modern Jerusalem
and were naturally very far from thinking of suspending, far less
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abandoning, the execution of this plan in deference to our telephone

calls; and I do not think it would have been very wide off the mark
to say that with their passive resistance to a cease-fire in the zone
which the Arab delegates would have to cross in order to reach the
French Consulate [in which the UN representatives were waiting],
they rendered all negotiation impossible without incurring the
responsibility of a blank refusal. The so-called Arab forces were
then irregulars, indifferently controlled by improvised leaders
under the nominal authority of the Arab Higher Committee.
Possibly, at that moment they would have been glad of a suspension
of hostilities and their explanation that the Jewish forces, by their
fire, were preventing their delegate from reaching the French
Consulate was sincere. Should this be so, one can but pay a tribute
of admiration to the ingenuity of the Jewish leaders who appeared
to be giving the greatest facilities for a settlement in which they
were not interested and which they themselves rendered
impossible.144
The Haganahs plan to capture all Jerusalem outside the Old City, referred to
by de Azcarate was named Operation Kilshon [Pitchfork]. Begun May 13, its
objective was a three-pronged advance through Arab or mixed zones to the south,
north or center of Jerusalem, to create a solid Jewish area embracing all of western
Jerusalem up to the Old City wall, and the capture of Sheikh Jarrah to link up with
the isolated Jewish stronghold on Mount Scopus.145 An essential aspect of the plan
was the occupation of Bevingrad, the central British security zone to the Old
Citys west, including the Russian Compound, General Post Office and other
strategic buildings. With great ease the Haganah took Bevingrad, due partly to the
collusion of the British forces. The night before the evacuation of their remaining
troops, British officers permitted Haganah patrols to enter the area. Therefore,
when the British troops departed from Bevingrad at noon on May 14, the occupation
by the Haganah took only ten minutes.146 Former Palestinian Arab fighter in
Jerusalem Abdullah Budeiri claims that he and his comrades had precise
information, via a British informer, regarding the British withdrawal from
Bevingrad, but lacked sufficient troops to cover the area. Haganah soldiers
succeeded in extending their control over Bevingrad into western Musrara, giving
them a strategic vantage point over Arab East Jerusalems commercial district.
On May 14 the British also secured the Haganahs occupation of the strategically
positioned Villa Harun al-Rashid in Talbiya, which towered over the
neighbourhood.147 The villa served as the command base for the Royal Air Force,
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and was a site from which Arab forces could potentially launch an attack on Rehavia,
home to most of the Zionist institutions, or conversely, from which the Haganah
could prevent one. An Israeli journalist wrote that on the eve of the British
evacuation in 1948, [Mandate] officials agreed the Haganah could have the keys
[to the villa]. But they still had to get in without letting the Iraqis know. So, as the
British vacated the house from the front door, the Jews infiltrated through the
back.148
The occupation of the Arab neighbourhoods south of Talbiya by the Zionist forces
was swift for, in de Azcarates words, hardly had the last English soldier disappeared
than the Jews launched their offensive, consolidating their possession of Qatamon
and seizing the German Colony and the other southern districts of Jerusalem.149
On the afternoon of the same day, May 14, Ben-Gurion declared the establishment
of the Jewish State in Palestine, to be called Israel. Israel had no defined boundaries,
a point of contention for the states founders. Ben-Gurion later wrote: There arose
the question of whether the Declaration ought to restrict itself to the framework of
the United Nations decision or whether it should merely be based on the decision [...]
I was opposed to specifying the borders.150 By a vote of five to four the Jewish
Agency leadership decided not to delineate Israels borders in the declaration.151 Still,
there was no doubt in Ben-Gurions mind that Jerusalem was part and parcel of the
State of Israel, as he told the provisional government on May 24:
With regard to the question of whether Jerusalem is within the
boundaries of the state or not, at present there are only factual areas
controlled by the Jewish army. Until peace is attained and the areas
are determined by international accord and with the agreement of
the concerned parties, we are speaking of areas controlled by the
Jewish governmentat present, unfortunately, without the Old
Cityjust like Tel Aviv, there is no distinction between Jerusalem
and Tel Aviv, Haifa, Hanita, and Bir Asluj. They are all within the
boundaries of the Jewish State.152
The Arab Legion

Upon Ben-Gurions declaration of independence, Transjordanalong with
Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iraqdeclared war on the new state. With the Israeli
forces increasingly entrenched hold upon West Jerusalem and their impending
attack on the Old City, Palestinian Arabs saw in Transjordans Arab Legion one
last opportunity to tip the scales.
The Arab Legion, Transjordans well-trained troops commanded by John Bagot
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Glubb, already had a presence in Jerusalem. Immediately prior to the end of the
British Mandate on May 14, Major Abdullah al-Tal, who commanded the Arab
Legion forces in the Jerusalem area, appealed to Glubb to leave at least one Arab
Legion company in Jerusalem to hold the Arab lines and to aid the Palestinian
Arab irregular soldiers. But Glubb, trying his best to avoid open conflict with the
Israelis, pulled every Arab Legion soldier out of Jerusalem by May 13.153
After the declaration of war, Arab Legion troops returned to Jerusalem but due
to Glubbs policy of non-involvement, remained on the citys outskirts. The Israelis,
meanwhile, were on the offensive. In the words of an American journalist stationed
in Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers pushed as far and as fast as they could in the first
hectic days of battle. They stopped when the resistance became too heavy.154 In
the wake of the Israeli onslaught, Palestinian Arabs dug their heels into East
Jerusalem. On May 15, Jerusalem Arab Radio broadcast Those who spread
alarming rumors inciting the population to evacuate must be arrested, and Haganah
Radio announced that the [AHC] National Committee was refusing to give visas
to anyone wishing to leave Jerusalem for Transjordan.155
On May 17, Israeli forces attacked the Jaffa and Zion Gates to relieve the besieged
Jewish Quarter. The attack on Jaffa Gate was repelled by Palestinian Arab defenders
using old rifles and slinging homemade grenades attached to cords.156 However,
Palmach soldiers did succeed in breaching the Arab defense at the Zion Gate leading
to the Jewish Quarter, after which they withdrew.157 The defenders knew that if
Israeli forces succeeded in establishing a bridgehead in the Jewish Quarter, they
would use it as a springboard to capture the entire Old City. They implored King
Abdullah to send the Arab Legion into the Old City.158 On the same day the Jewish
Quarters Rabbi Weingarten, speaking on behalf of the besieged Jews, issued a
message that they would surrender only to the Arab Legion.159 The next day Glubb,
following King Abdullahs instructions, ordered 300 men to advance into Jerusalem
to link up with the Arab forces in the Old City.160 The Arab Legions presence in
the Old City pre-empted an Israeli attack for the next few weeks. The Haganah
still managed to inflict a high number of casualties by shelling the Arab quarters
densely populated with refugees from West Jerusalem.161
It soon dawned upon Major al-Tal that his British superiors had sent him and
his troops into Jerusalem on a mission that was mainly defensive in nature. In his
memoirs, al-Tal wrote: I thought that Jerusalem would certainly fall under my
control, until I realized that I had been left alone with only 600 soldiers, and the
artillery would remain with Lash [Brigadier Norman Lash, Glubbs second-incommand] and the other British officers.162
According to al-Tal, the forces under his command were sufficient to protect
the Arab sections of East Jerusalem and to bomb the besieged Jewish Quarter, but
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inadequate to attack the Israeli-held neighbourhoods outside the Old Citys walls.
Lash was unwilling to help him bomb important targets in West Jerusalem such as
the Shneller military base, Bevingrad, Israeli official buildings in Rehavia, and
the main power generator.163
The tension between Arab soldiers wanting to conquer West Jerusalem and the
restraint ordered by their British superiors produced instances of insubordination.
On May 21, Arab Legion Lieutenant Ghazi al-Harbi, defying an explicit order by
Colonel Bill Newman, led an assault on the monastery of Notre Dame, located
across from the New Gate adjacent to Bevingrad.164 The Legion troops, under
cover of heavy artillery fire ordered by Lieutenant Muhammed Ma'aydehbut
sustaining heavy lossessucceeded in gaining a foothold on the monasterys ground
floor. Glubb, however, ordered the artillery to cease fire and the Arab troops were
forced to withdraw.165 Al-Harbi implored Glubb to allow him to launch a second
attack on Notre Dame. When Glubb refused, al-Harbi resigned in protest.166
According to Benny Morris, the attack on Notre Dame was apparently designed
to relieve pressure, or expected pressure, on the Old City and Arab East Jerusalem
in general, and [was] never pressed with determination. Conquest of West Jerusalem
was never, and was never seen to be, on the cards.167
A result of the Arab Legions attack on Notre Dame was that the United States
held Britain accountable for the Legions actions. The US government threatened
to partially lift its Middle East arms embargo and allow shipments to Israel unless
Britain cut off supplies to the Arab armies and helped the UN impose a truce.168
Britain quickly assured the US that the Arab Legion would remain on the defensive
in Jerusalem.169
On May 24, al-Tal disobeyed the orders of his British superiors by bombing
Hebrew University on Mount Scopus. The American Consulate in Amman
immediately intervened and pressured King Abdullah into ordering al-Tal to cease
the shelling. Similar events occurred in Jerusalems south. Egyptian troops arrived
in Beit Safafa and Beit Jala and, in coordination with the Arab Legion, attacked
and occupied the strategically located kibbutz Ramat Rahel. The commanding
officer of the Arab Legion unit promptly received an order from Brigadier Lash to
withdraw from the kibbutz. An argument ensued among the Legion officers at
Ramat Rahel. Eventually the Legion soldiers withdrew, with the Egyptian troops
compelled to follow suit.170
On May 27, al-Tals troops, who had consistently shelled the Jewish Quarter,
surrounded the defending Israeli troops in the Hurva Synagogue. The following
day the Israelis surrendered to the Arab Legion, whose soldiers vigorously prevented
any looting of the Jewish Quarter.171 The Israeli men were held as prisoners of war
and the women and children were set free to cross back into West Jerusalem. There
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is no record of harm befalling any of the 1,500 Israeli soldiers or civilians who
surrendered in the Jewish Quarter.172
With the Old City entirely under Arab control, al-Tal wished to launch an attack
on West Jerusalem through Jaffa Gate.173 The Israelis in West Jerusalem were
again cut off from their coastal supply route, this time by Arab Legion positions on
the foothills of the Jerusalem corridor, and were running low on ammunition. Their
troops were utterly exhausted, and food and water were in dangerously short supply.
From the heights of Sheikh Jarrah, the Mount of Olives and Nebi Samuel, the Arab
Legion was firing heavy shells into West Jerusalem, and Israeli casualties were
rapidly mounting. Despite the Legions excellent opportunity to conquer West
Jerusalem, Glubb rejected al-Tals proposal and refused to deploy the tanks and
troops needed to launch a full-scale attack on Jerusalem.174
Two dispatches from London on May 29 sealed any hope al-Tal still harbored
of taking West Jerusalem. The first advised that all British officers in the Arab
Legiontwo-thirds of that armys high ranking soldierswere to be removed
from the fighting in Palestine. The second announced that Britain, the Arab Legions
primary supplier of weapons, was imposing an embargo on arms deliveries to the
Middle East.175
On June 11, the Israelis, desperate to relieve their troops and civilians in
Jerusalem, and the Arab countries, divided on whether to continue fighting but
under pressure from Britain and the US, agreed to a thirty-day truce mediated by
the UN. In open violation of the cease-fire terms, the Haganah transported hundreds
of soldiers and tons of arms, including heavy artillery and ammunition to Jerusalem
via the Burma Road.176 Conversely, the Arab forces, cut off from their main
sources of arms due to the British embargo, were unable to adequately prepare
themselves for the renewed fighting at the end of the cease-fire. De Azcarates
observation was that:
[...] taken as a whole, the first truce favored the Jews; not only in
the particular case of Jerusalem, but also because [...] any truce, by
its very nature, hinders the attacking forces in pursuing their
objectives and makes it possible for the defenders to consolidate
and improve their positions.177
On June 29, 1948, the Haganah became the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), into
which the Irgun and the Lehi were theoretically incorporated. However, the Irgun
and Lehi forces in Jerusalemwhere they were largely concentratedretained a
large degree of operational autonomy.178
In East Jerusalem, the Transjordanians had taken both military and political
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control. They effectively abolished the AHC and subordinated the National
Committee to Abdullah al-Tal, who was appointed military governor. They also
moved to establish a new pro-Hashemite cadre of administration and to disband
the remaining Arab Liberation Army units.179
Palestinian Arabs in the Old City, including many who had been displaced from
West Jerusalem, used the lull in the fighting to escape to safer areas. Their flight
and the consequent desolation visited upon the Old City is described in the diaries
of Greek Vice-Consul in Jerusalem, CX Mavrides:
What really characterized the Old City during the four weeks of
the truce was the exodus of the non-combatant population who
took refuge in the countryside, the surrounding villages and towns
such as Ramallah, Jericho and Bethlehem, or Transjordan. From
morning till evening the streets were full of porters and packanimals, belonging to the Ta'amreh and A'bed tribes, who were
carrying furniture, household utensils, mattresses, clothing, etc.,
from different parts of the city and heading to the Damascus Gate.
The exodus was like an ongoing chain of animals, porters, women,
aged people, childrenall of them carrying something under the
burning sun of July. As the end of the truce neared, this chain of
people and animals was getting denser and denser every day.
On Friday, July 10, as the truce had expired (8:00 a.m.), the Old
City was almost empty. Out of a population of 60,000 (plus the
nearly 10,000 refugees who came from the new city suburbs), it is
estimated that only about 5,000 to 7,000 only remain. Most of them
are very poor, and thus did not have enough money to move away.
Among those remaining in the city are the clerics of the different
monasteries, patriarchates and the different religious establishments
and the civilian government and consular and municipal employees
obligated to remain at their posts. [...] And indeed, the old citys
narrow streets, formerly teeming with people selling and buying,
with visitors, villagers and passers-by, is now a city empty of people,
a city with closed shops, and only once in a while one would meet
a person or two in the street. Because of this situation, robberies
are taking place in the streets and in full daylight and the robbed
passers-by is unable to call anyone for help.180
During the truce, the Israeli forces not only consolidated their positions in and
around Jerusalem, but apparently encircled and attacked the village of 'Ayn Karim
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as well. There are many conflicting accounts of when exactly the village fell to the
IDF. The following account was related by a former 'Ayn Karim resident who
defended the village:
The villagers of 'Ayn Karim had between thirty and forty guns,
none of which were in good condition. The National Council in
Jerusalem sent us some faulty ammunition from World War II. I
bought a rifle and ammunition with my own money for 25 dinars.
We defended the village against the Zionist attack for nine days. I
was on the front. We appealed to Egyptian Army soldiers stationed
in Bethlehem to help us, but they told us that they could not unless
they received explicit instructions from King Abdullah. The king
eventually sent two [Arab Legion] tanks to help us. The
Transjordanian soldiers told us to go and rest because we had been
fighting for so long, and that they would defend the village. The
next day the tanks disappeared and 'Ayn Karim was occupied by
the Zionists. That was on the eleventh of July.181
According to this account, the IDF indeed captured 'Ayn Karim after the truce
ended on July 9, but had waged several days of battle against the village during the
truce.182 The adjacent village of al-Malha fell on July 13-14 after prolonged battles
with IDF and Irgun units.183
At the end of the cease-fire, IDF and Arab Legion cannons exchanged furious
gunfire inside Jerusalem, and the Israeli troops launched a final abortive attack on
the Old City. With the artillery brought in during the cease-fire, the IDF shelled the
Old City intensely, inflicting extensive damage but this time causing a low casualty
rate because so many had fled.184 By then Palestinian Arabs viewed the Arab
Legion with a large measure of skepticism, as related by the account of John Rose,
one of the few remaining non-Jews in West Jerusalem:
The stalemate was intriguing and the intensity of fruitless daily
bombing aroused suspicion. Rumors soon spread that perhaps after
all there was a secret agreement between the sides and that the
noise we heard was only a sideshow for the benefit of the population.
The Arab Legion was accused of using ammunition filled with bran
and sawdust intended to cause minimum damage to the enemy.185
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Israels Expropriation and Settling of Arab Neighbourhoods in

West Jerusalem
A new cease-fire, mediated by the UN, commenced in Jerusalem on July 17,
1948, and some days later Moshe Dayan replaced David Shaltiel as the IDF
commander in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was now effectively divided into the Israelicontrolled West and the Transjordanian-controlled East. A belt of no-mans land
ran south from Sheikh Jarrah, along the west side of the Old Citys walls, and
down Hebron Road to Ramat Rahel.
On June 27, UN Mediator Count Folke Bernadotte issued his suggestions for a
settlement: a Palestinian union between two members, one Jewish and one Arab.
The Arab members territory would include Transjordan, the Western Galilee and
Jerusalem. Palestinian refugees would be allowed to return to their homes without
restriction and regain possession of their property. Israel rejected this plan as being
even worse than internationalization, and the Arab states rejected it for consolidating
too much control of territory in King Abdullahs hands and for recognizing Israel.
The only person in favor was King Abdullah, but publicly he towed the Arab League
line of resistance to the plan.186
In July, the campaign in Israel to annex West Jerusalem had already reached
what an American journalist described as an intense pitch.187 He wrote that
extremists of the Irgun and the Stern Gang [...] collected thousands of signatures
on annexation petitions. Their soldiers marched down Ben Yehuda Street, carrying
banners that read JerusalemNo Foreign Rule. In Pied Piper fashion, hundreds
of young men and women trailed behind them.188 On August 2, the Israeli
provisional government declared West Jerusalem territory occupied by the State
of Israel, whose laws were to be enforced throughout the city, and appointed Dov
Joseph as military governor.189 At this time Israeli leaders took no further official
action towards the annexation of West Jerusalem due to their interest in Israel
attaining UN membership.190 Ben-Gurion, however, was still mulling over plans
to conquer the whole of Jerusalem and the whole of Palestine. On September 26,
he proposed to the provisional government a plan he recorded in his diary, according
to which Israeli forces would invade
Bethlehem and Hebron, where there are about a hundred thousand
Arabs. I assume that most of the Arabs of Jerusalem, Bethlehem,
and Hebron would flee, like the Arabs of Lydda, Jaffa, Tiberias,
and Safad, and we will control the whole breadth of the country up
to the Transjordan.191
In another diary entry he wrote about the same plan:
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It is not impossible... that we will be able to conquer the way to the

Negev, Eilat, and the Dead Sea and to secure the Negev for
ourselves; also to broaden the corridor to Jerusalem from north
and south; to liberate the rest of Jerusalem and to take the Old City;
to seize all of central and western Galilee and to expand the borders
of the state in all directions.192
While the state delayed officially annexing West Jerusalem, it employed its
Absentee Property Regulations to confiscate all Arab homes, lands, and businesses,
including any contents that had not already been looted.193 These regulations, later
codified as the Absentee Property Law of 1950, allowed all property belonging to
an absentee to be transferred to the Custodian of Absentee Property. An absentee
was defined as a person who, at any time between November 29, 1947 and the day
on which the state of emergency declared in 1948 would cease to exist, became a
national or citizen of an Arab country, visited an Arab country, or left his ordinary
place of residence in Palestine for a place outside Palestine before September 1,
1948.194 The status of the custodian, according to the law, is the same as was that
of the owner of the property, enabling him to choose to maintain the property, sell
it or lease it.195
Even before the first cease-fire in June, the Housing Committee began settling
Jewish Israelismainly persons displaced due to the fightingin Palestinian
neighbourhoods such as Qatamon and the German Colony, but it was not until
September that this policy was carried out systematically. New immigrants, the
first category of Israelis to be settled, were housed in the German Colony, Qatamon,
Baq'a, Musrara, Deir Abu Tor and Talbiya. Arnon Golan writes that the settling of
new immigrants in Arab neighbourhoods in West Jerusalem was not so much a
result of the lack of alternative housing, but rather a political strategy:
Populating the neighbourhoods also had an important political
component in aiding the struggle against taking the city, or parts of it
away from the State of Israels hands. Starting in September, the
Israeli government undertook a policy of annexation in practice of
the part of the city under its control, despite the fact that it had not yet
officially annulled its recognition of the UN [partition] resolution.
The population by Jews of former Arab neighbourhoods was
supposed to create facts on the ground, after which it would be difficult
to alter them in the framework of a political agreement. New
immigrants, so very dependent, were the governments and the Jewish
Agencys primary reserve for housing these neighbourhoods.196
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There was also a rationale internal to Israeli politics according to which new
immigrants were settled in West Jerusalem. The ruling party, Mapai, sought to
strengthen its position, which was weak among Jerusalems veteran population,
through garnering support from new immigrants by accommodating them in the
city. To encourage settlement in West Jerusalem where conditions were relatively
difficult, the Israeli government provided incentives, like exemption from army
service, for those who remained in the city.197
So zealously did the Jewish Agency settle new immigrants in Palestinians
houses that its officials clashed with those of the Custodian for Absentee Property.
Not only did the Jewish Agency misreport to the Custodian of Absentee Property
concerning the houses in which it was settling new immigrants, but it also took
property, without authorization, from Palestinian Arabs homes and handed it over
to the Jewish Agencys New Immigrant Authority.198 The new immigrants, for
their part, were more than willing to move into the spacious Palestinian homes. So
much so, that when some were told that they would be housed in the Jewish
neighbourhood of Neve Sha'anan, they refused to move there, saying they preferred
to live in the villas of Qatamon.199
As the new immigrants flooded into West Jerusalem, an acute housing crisis
developed. On September 15, 1948, Military Governor Joseph reported that 5,000
Jews in West Jerusalem were in need of housing.200 As Qatamon and the German
Colony were already overcrowded, Jews began to be housed primarily in Baq'a
and the Greek Colony. However, those lacking housing grew impatient, and many
broke into and squatted in empty houses in Qatamon. Then again, some squatters
had housing elsewhere but simply desired to improve their living conditions by
moving into the more spacious Arab homes.201 And some squatters, according to
Golan, were Israeli soldiers:
Among the squatters there were even (Israeli) officers who exploited
their positions and arbitrarily took apartments for themselves. On
November 18 the head of the [Israeli army] City Commanders
Welfare Unit appealed to the military governor after the housing
shortage worsened to the extent that there were no longer houses to
invade and the available houses in Baq'a were in his opinion
unsuitable for tenants because their windows, doors and facilities
had been plundered or destroyed.202
Some soldiers had two apartments: one in the city center and one in Arab
neighbourhoods which they rented out for a considerable price. By early 1950 the
Israeli housing authorities authorized almost all the squatters, soldiers and civilians,
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to remain in the Palestinian homes they had broken into.203

Looting was still a problem in Jerusalem, as related by Dov Joseph in a letter to
Ben-Gurion:
The looting is spreading once again ... I cannot verify all the reports
which reach me, but I get the distinct impression that the commanders
are not over-eager to catch and punish the thieves ... I receive complaints
every day. By way of example, I enclose a copy of a letter I received
from the manager of the Notre Dame de France. Behavior like this in
a monastery can cause quite serious harm to us. Ive done my best to
put a stop to the thefts there, which are all done by soldiers, since
civilians are not permitted to enter the place. But as you can see from
this letter, these acts are continuing. I am powerless.204
As previously mentioned, the Palestinian Arabs remaining in the West Jerusalem
suburbs were confined to Baq'a. In mid-September, the Israeli military further
concentrated them into a half-square mile area surrounded by a barbed-wire fence.
During daylight hours they were permitted to roam around the compound, and at
night were under curfew. Israeli marauders broke through the fence to steal what they
could from the non-Jews. In addition, gangs of Israeli soldiers burst into the houses on
the pretext that they were looking for hidden arms and Arabs, and proceeded to
extort money, jewelry, and other valuables.205 Some Jews, due to the housing shortage,
defied the military authorities separation policy and rented rooms from non-Jews in
the concentration zone.
The formal cessation of hostilities between Israel and the Arab States at the end
of November 1948 allowed the expansion of Jewish settlement in Jerusalem into the
Arab neighbourhoods that until then had been military zones. Musrara was one such
neighbourhood, and Hanah Levy, who had recently emigrated from Morocco, described
the danger she faced after settling in a house next to the demarcation line:
Outside my house was a sign: Warning! Border Ahead. If I took a
wrong step, I would be shot by an Arab sniper. Stones were thrown
and bullets fired through my window from the other side [East
Jerusalem]. Because it was such a dangerous place to live, the
authorities never required me to pay rent or to buy the house.206
Levy said that Jewish immigrants, practically all of them from North Africa, were
settled in the frontier neighbourhood of Musrara so that the [Palestinian] Arabs would
know that there are Jews living here and would be scared to infiltrate into the
neighbourhood.207
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By the end of May 1949, all of West Jerusalems Arab districts had been settled,
at least to some extent, by Jews, most of them new immigrants.208 During the
summer of 1949, several hundred new immigrants from Eastern Europe were settled
in Deir Yasin, despite a protest to Ben-Gurion by some of the Yishuvs leading
intellectuals, including Martin Buber and Akiva Ernst Simon. They wrote,
Resettling Deir Yasin within a year of the crime, and with the framework of ordinary
settlement, would amount to an endorsement of, or at least an acquiescence with,
the massacre.209 Ben-Gurion never responded to their repeated protests and Givat
Shaul Bet was established at the site of the village.210 Henry Cattan estimates that,
in all, Israel occupied some ten thousand Arab homes, mostly fully furnished, in
West Jerusalem.211
UN Resolution 194
Count Bernadotte, the UN Mediator for Palestine, was assassinated by the Lehi
on September 16, 1948. For months he had been shuttling between the Arab states
and Israel trying to arrange, among other issues, the repatriation of Palestinian
Arab refugees. Bernadotte was skeptical about the viability and justice of the UN
Partition Plan as a solution to the Arab-Jewish conflict. He recommended to the
UN General Assembly that the right of the Arab refugees to return to their homes
in Jewish-controlled territory at the earliest possible date should be affirmed by the
United Nations.212 Regarding Jerusalem, he forwarded multiple suggestions before
settling upon the idea of a corpus separatum.
The movements of refugees from West Jerusalem after what Palestinians call
al-Nakba [the catastrophe] are difficult to trace. This is because a large number
had the means to relocate elsewhere, often abroad, and did not move en masse to
resettle in the West Bank, Gaza, or the nearby Arab countries, as happened in the
case of refugees from many villages. Still, in late 1948, there were 7,500 Palestinian
Arab refugees from Jerusalem, including the West Jerusalem neighbourhoods of
Qatamon, Upper and Lower Baq'a, and Musrara living in East Jerusalem.213 These
refugees either lived in the open or were housed in mosques, convents, schools,
and Old City houses in ruinous conditions. They were restricted to meager food
rations and suffered from malnutrition. Nonetheless, their living conditions were
better than those of refugees in Gaza and the West Bank, partly due to the presence
of many Christian relief organizations in Jerusalem.214 It is also recorded that a
group of Christian refugees went to Salt, Madaba and Amman, and were joined
by a group of Armenian Jerusalemites.215
Ex-British Mandate employee Stuart Perowne, who carried out relief work with
Palestinian refugees in the Jerusalem area, categorized them as: official refugees,
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economic refugees, and dwellers in frontier villages.216 Many official refugees

were to be later sheltered in the camps of the United Nations Relief Works Agency
(UNRWA) upon its establishment in 1950. UNRWAs criteria for defining people
as refugees were those who had lost their homes, their means of livelihood, or
were in need. All Palestinians displaced from West Jerusalem and its surrounding
villages were, and are, such refugees.
Economic refugees, according to Perowne, were those who suffered economic
loss. They were of two types. The first included, in the case of West Jerusalem,
those who owned property but resided elsewhere; those who worked for the Mandate
in the city; and those who had set up small shops and trades, or were employed by
the wealthy as servants, chauffeurs and gardeners. Many such economic refugees
had to start again from scratch. The second type of economic refugees were people
in the Jerusalem area dependent upon the economic activity of those who earned
their income in West Jerusalem. The fall of West Jerusalem led to a sharp decline
in their standard of living and particularly, writes Perowne, their standard of
education.
Dwellers in frontier villages were impacted not just due to the danger of living
on the demarcation line, but also because many of them were cut off from their
lands and, as happened with Beit Safafa, their fellow villagers and relatives. Perowne
concluded that in Jerusalem itself, the problem is concentrated, for in Jerusalem
you have both official refugees and economic refugees, and a truce line that goes
right through the city.217
On December 11, 1948, the UN General Assembly accepted Count Bernadottes
recommendations regarding the refugees and Jerusalem and, in Paragraph 11 of
Resolution 194 (III), stated that:
[...] the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace
with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest
practicable date, and that
should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and
for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of
international law or in equity, should be made good by the
governments or authorities responsible.
The same resolution reiterates UN Resolution 181 that Jerusalem be a corpus
separatum and calls for the citys demilitarization:
The General Assembly [...]
8. Resolves that, in view of its association with three world religions,
the Jerusalem area, including the present municipality of Jerusalem
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plus the surrounding villages and towns, the most eastern of which
shall be Abu Dis; the most southern, Bethlehem; the most western,
Ein Kerem (including also the built-up area of Motsa); and the
most northern Shu'fat, should be accorded special and separate
treatment from the rest of Palestine and should be placed under
effective United Nations control;
Requests the Security Council to take further steps to ensure the
demilitarization of Jerusalem at the earliest possible date;
Instructs the [UN Conciliation] Commission to present to the fourth
regular session of the General Assembly detailed proposals for a
permanent international regime for the Jerusalem area which will
provide for the maximum local autonomy for distinctive groups
consistent with the special international status of the Jerusalem area;
[...] 9. Resolves that, pending agreement on more detailed
arrangements among the Governments and authorities concerned,
the freest possible access to Jerusalem by road, rail or air should be
accorded to all inhabitants of Palestine.
Four days after the UN resolution, Jerusalem Military Governor Dov Joseph
reported to the Governors Council that to counter the UN refusal to include
Jerusalem in the State of Israels borders, he had ordered the immediate expansion
of Jewish housing areas into territories abandoned by Arabs which until then had
not been populated by Jews. The first such area to be settled was the vicinity of the
mercantile center in Mamillah.218
In February 1949, with the culmination of the military governments activities,
Israel annexed the whole of West Jerusalem. Israels defiance of UN Resolution
194 marked the first time that the state would challenge a UN resolution.
Armistice: Israel and Jordans Division of Jerusalem

On February 2, 1949, the Israeli government declared that it no longer considered
West Jerusalem occupied territory and abolished military rule there. Negotiations
over Jerusalemand the rest of the territory bordering the Israeli-Transjordanian
front linesbegan the same month. Abdullah al-Tal represented the Transjordanians
and Moshe Dayan the Israelis. The division of Jerusalem between Transjordan and
Israel, without Palestinian Arabs having a say in the matter, was a foregone
conclusion.219
Given the pragmatism displayed by the two sides, it did not take long for them
to arrange a modus vivendi over Jerusalem. Avi Shlaim, in Collusion Across the
Jordan, offers an analysis of the motivations behind the Israeli-Transjordanian
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understanding.220 Militarily, Jerusalem provided strategic depth and height for both
countries. In addition, both Zionist leaders and King Abdullah saw that the religious
and historical weight attached to the city would help to provide legitimacy for their
regimes. Then there were the Mufti, the Arab Higher Committee, and Palestinian
nationalism in general, seen as the enemies of both Zionist and Hashemite aspirations
in Palestine. For King Abdullah, suppression of the agents of Palestinian nationalism
would be most efficient if he were to control their operational base, East Jerusalem.
Israel, for its part, was willing to cede East Jerusalem if it meant gaining a partner
to squash Palestinian Arab hopes for a state and to neutralize their activities across
the line in Jerusalem. In any case, Israeli leaders knew to be patient regarding
Jerusalem, for if they were to proceed with the conquest of the whole city, they
risked an outcry by the international community calling for the citys
internationalization. Partition, Shlaim concludes, was preferable to
internationalization.221 Dov Yosef, speaking in favor of the division of Jerusalem,
said:
I find it difficult to understand the political logic that holds that
instead of the Arabs having something, it is preferable that both
they and we have nothing. We will pluck out one of our eyes so
that we can pluck out both of theirs.222
So opposed to internationalization was Israel and so confident of its strong position
in relation to its neighbors, that in mid-1949 Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett
announced that Israel would not accept internationalization even for the sake of a
peace treaty with the Arab states.223
Transjordan and Israel signed an armistice agreement on April 3, 1949, which
stipulated that their mutual borders were neither political nor territorial and that
there was no commitment as regards the ultimate settlement of the Palestine
question.224 The two sides continued talking towards an overall peace treaty, but
were unable to bridge their disagreements, particularly concerning Jerusalem. The
initial Jordanian demand for a return of all Palestinian Arabs to their homes in
West Jerusalems southern neighbourhoods was promptly rejected by Israel.225
Talks between Jordan and Israel broke down in May and resumed in January
1950. Israels bottom line was control over the Old Citys Jewish Quarter and
secure access to Mount Scopus. For their part, the Jordanian negotiators were in
general willing to accept monetary compensation for the Arab quarters of West
Jerusalem. However, Khulusi Khayri, a Palestinian Arab minister in Jordans
government who participated in the talks, demanded, much to King Abdullahs
chagrin, the return of all Arab quarters of Jerusalem.
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Khayri was subsequently dropped from the negotiating team.226 Israel then entered
into direct negotiations with the king, and the two sides quickly drew up a draft
peace agreement. The draft, without explicitly referring to refugees, agreed that
compensation would be paid to property owners in Jerusalem whose property
remained under the control of the other party: that is, Arabs from West Jerusalem
and Jews from East Jerusalem.227 However, the agreement was never signed because
of Jordanian unwillingness to cede territory in the Old City and pressure from
Arab states against a unilateral treaty with Israel.228
Meanwhile, Palestinian refugees from West Jerusalem waited expectantly, but
in vain, on the eastern side of the demarcation line for a favorable outcome to the
negotiations. At the time, Mavrides wrote:
After the cessation of hostilities, the inhabitants of the suburbs of
Baq'a, Qatamon, Talbiya and the Greek and German Colonies who
took refuge in the Old City in anguish, are awaiting the opening of
the New Gate and the Jaffa Gatethe unification of the two sectors
of the divided cityto go and visit and recover their abandoned
homes.229
Writing later from East Jerusalem, Stuart Perowne described the path of the
demarcation line:
Starting from the north, it comes in obliquely from the west, until
it reaches the western spur of Mount Scopus, to the west of the
main road. It then runs down in a southerly direction, skirting the
American Colony and St. Georges, which remain in Jordan by a
matter of yards, and so down to the Damascus Gate, which is again
just within Jordan. Here the line turns southwest, and runs up the
hill, along the old wall of the city, and so down nearly to the Jaffa
Gate. Thence it runs again along the Old City wall, to the southwest
corner of it. Here it turns east, but only to just below the Zion Gate;
then south again, down to the former Government House, and thence
it gradually eases off to the west.230
On the eastern spur of Mount Scopus there was a demilitarized zone, which
comprised the Hebrew University, the Hadassah Hospital, and the British War
Cemetery.
Throughout the negotiations, the Israelization of West Jerusalem proceeded. To
lessen the scope of potential Israeli compromises in the event of a peace agreement,
Moshe Dayan ordered that the frontier neighbourhood of Deir Abu Tor be settled,
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together with Talpiyot and Ramat Rachel. Dayans directive was designed to preempt
pressure on Israel from the UN-chaired armistice commission to relinquish control
over the southern Jerusalem-Bethlehem road.231 As happened in other Arab
neighbourhoods that were opened up to settlement, buildings and homes in the
Deir Abu Tor area were looted.232
In May 1949, Israel took over, in accordance with the armistice agreements, the
northern half of Beit Safafa, a village in south Jerusalem which had been under
Jordanian control. Beit Safafa villagers were not consulted about the arrangement
to partition their village and were understandably enraged. For one year villagers
could move between the two halves, but then a fence was erected and families
were split and people cut off from their land. For example, Ahmad Salman lost one
hundred dunams of land in West Jerusalem while he remained on the Jordanian
side of the village.233
It was not until November 1949 that Israel lifted the movement restrictions
imposed on those Palestinians confined to the Baq'a zone.234 They were issued
Israeli identity cards and, together with the Beit Safafa villagers inside Israelicontrolled territory, constituted the small Palestinian Arab minority of West
Jerusalem. The Custodian of Absentee Property confiscated the homes of many
Arabs in the Baq'a zone, and they were forced to pay rent to the Israeli state. John
Rose recorded the confiscation of his aunts property in Baq'a:
This [Absentee Property] law finally caught up with Aunt Arousiag
and she was informed by the Custodian of Enemy Property that
she had no rights to the house. She was to be treated as a tenant,
and a demand for rent was sent to her for the two rooms which she
occupied; furthermore, rents collected by her were to be handed
over to the Custodian. The owner had been her late brother, Hagop,
and her two nephews and two nieces were recognized as joint heirs
to the property. Two of them were considered absentees, the other
two not. This news caused much worry to us, and we sympathized
with Aunt Arousiag who in vain kept on explaining that the house
was really hers. She had lived there since it was built by her brother
at the turn of the century, and had ploughed most of her earnings
into the building. Unfortunately her pleas fell on deaf ears.235
The Israeli Transfer of Government to West Jerusalem

By the end of 1948, Israel had not formally annexed West Jerusalem so as not to
jeopardize its pending application for UN membership. After its first application
for admission was rejected by the UN Security Council on December 17, 1948,
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Israels UN representative repeatedly reassured the General Assembly that his

government intended to comply with the resolutions pertaining to Jerusalem.236
The UN was skeptical, however, of the Israeli governments good faith
concerning Jerusalem when, in early 1949, it began transferring its offices to the
city from Tel Aviv. The transfer of government offices enjoyed top priority on
Prime Minister Ben Gurions agenda as an important step towards the official
declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and a preventive measure against
the implementation of the UN resolutions to internationalize the city. Still, Israels
UN representative Abba Eban tried to make the UN think otherwise.
Following Israels new application for membership on February 24, 1949, Eban
testified before the UNs Ad Hoc Political Committee. His remarks before the
committeeat best misleading and at worst duplicitousare traced in Henry
Cattans book, Jerusalem. When queried about Israels intentions in the transfer of
government offices, Eban said that:
... the re-establishment of institutions of health and learning, and of
at least a proportion of the official business which had once been
the main support of Jerusalem, had been indispensable to prevent
the city from becoming impoverished and depressed. That was the
sole motive for transferring to Jerusalem the personnel of nonpolitical departments whose presence might stem the flight from
Jerusalem and preserve the citys traditional primacy in the religious,
educational and medical life of the country. No juridical facts
whatever were created by such steps, which were dictated not by a
desire to create new political facts, but to assist Jerusalem and to
add economic recovery to the other aspects of its splendid
recuperation.237
Eban also reassured the committee that Israel would not invoke Article 2,
paragraph 7, of the charterwhich proscribes the UN from intervening in matters
within the domestic jurisdiction of statesto avoid complying with the UN
resolutions concerning refugees and Jerusalem:
The government of Israel will co-operate with the Assembly in
seeking a solution to those problems ... I do not think that Article 2,
paragraph 7, of the Charter, which relates to domestic jurisdiction,
could possibly affect the Jerusalem problem, since the legal status
of Jerusalem is different from that of the territory in which Israel is
sovereign. My own feeling is that it would be a mistake for any of
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the Governments concerned to take refuge, with regard to the

refugee problem, in their legal rights to exclude people from their
territories.238
Eban added that, upon Israels admission to the UN, the General Assembly
would then be able to make recommendations directly to the Government of Israel
[about Jerusalem], which would, I think, attribute to those resolutions extremely
wide validity.239 Eban must have felt confident that the UN would not subject his
statements to rigorous scrutiny, for he even claimed that the holding of the first
Israeli Knesset, or parliament, in Jerusalem on February 14, 1949, was based solely
on an historical motive which had nothing whatever to do with the future status of
Jerusalem.240
For his part, Ben-Gurion had never tried to veil his plans to hold onto Jerusalem.
According to his four-year plan of state development, Jerusalem would be the
center of Israeli life, and various governmental, national, and cultural institutions
would be shifted to the city. Also, new industries would be created there, and
settlements would be erected in a defensive belt.241
Despite Israels moves in Jerusalem, the UN saw fit to admit it as a new member
on May 11, 1949, with the General Assembly placing on the record Israels
declarations and explanations regarding the implementation of Resolutions 181
and 194.242
The Israeli government, meanwhile, steadily proceeded with its transfer of offices
to Jerusalem. A major aspect of the transfer was the relocation of thousands of
government clerks, who received preferential treatment in the allocation of housing.
On April 12, 1949, a high-level government meeting was held in the Israeli Defense
Ministry to discuss the housing of government clerks in Jerusalem. It was decided
that four hundred apartment units be allocated to the clerks and that they be given
priority in choosing apartments in the neighbourhoods of Baq'a, the German Colony
and the Greek Colony. Shaul Avigur, one of Ben-Gurions closest advisors, was to
be the absolute arbitrator in any dispute. As part of settling and resettling new
immigrants in alternative sites, the Absorption Department was granted authority
over Musrara and Lower Lifta.243 Following this decision, new immigrants were
only allocated housing in neighbourhoods reserved for government clerks in those
apartments that were in such bad shape that the cost of renovation was too high.244
Houses in the elegant neighbourhood of Talbiya were reserved exclusively for
senior officials and those with important connections, such as judges and professors
at the Hebrew University.245
Out of political considerations, though, government clerks were sometimes
placed in less desirable neighbourhoods. The Ministry of Provisioning and
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Rationings clerks were housed in Deir Abu Tor, adjacent to the demarcation line.
These houses were in terrible condition due to the intense fighting that had been
waged in the neighbourhood, and there remained a danger of sniper fire. Still, a
decision was taken to house the clerks in Deir Abu Tor because of Israels goal to
settle Jews throughout the full area of Jerusalem under its control. Many of these
clerks requested to be relocated in Qatamon where the expansive houses were in
better condition. In the end, senior-ranking officials succeeded in being housed in
Qatamon, while regular clerks were left in Deir Abu Tor.246
To provide for the ever-increasing number of Jewish residents in Jerusalem, the
Israeli government opened many new schools and health service facilities; most
were located in buildings belonging to Palestinians. The Histadrut opened dozens
of schools in Musrara, Baq'a, the German Colony and 'Ayn Karim.247 To stimulate
Jewish Jerusalems economy, new small industries and businesses were given special
loans to lure them to the city.248 The Custodian of Absentee Property handed over
many buildings to be renovated for workshops, mostly in Mamillah, while additional
ones were set up in the German Colony and the Greek Colony.249
Jerusalem as Israels Capital

In the fall of 1949, an international lobby group of Catholic (particularly Latin
American), Communist and Muslim countries pushed for a new vote on
internationalization in the UN General Assembly.250 The vote was scheduled for
December 9. By that time, though, the Israeli government was well on its way to
making West Jerusalem the states political hub. As recorded by New York Herald
Tribune correspondent Kenneth Bilby: By October 30, 1949, as the UN [General]
Assembly prepared to debate a new internationalization scheme, the movement of
the government was in full swing [...] Every ministry established a nucleus in
Jerusalem. About a thousand governmental employees had moved there. Israel
was preparing to present the UN with a fait accompli.251 The previous month, in
response to a suggestion by the UN Palestine Conciliation Commission to proceed
with the citys internationalization, Foreign Minister Sharett had proclaimed, that
Jerusalem is an inseparable part of Israelpolitically, militarily, administratively,
economically, socially, and culturally.252 Four days before the UN vote Ben-Gurion
reasserted that Jewish Jerusalem is an organic and inseparable part of the State of
Israel.253
The General Assembly, in issuing Resolution 303 (IV), reiterated the prior
resolutions concerning Jerusalem, namely that an international regime establish a
corpus separatum in the city. The resolution provoked serious concern among the
Israeli government, and it even considered the possibility that the UN would create
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an international army and take Jerusalem by force. To this, Ben-Gurion said,

Obviously, if it comes to a confrontation with a military force sent by the UN, we
shall give in.254 Still, the government reckoned an invasion by UN-deployed troops
unlikely, and feared economic sanctions as a more realistic outcome of the
resolution.255
Overcoming his governments trepidation, Ben-Gurion again forged ahead with
his plans to make Jerusalem indisputable Israeli territory. The Israeli Prime Minister
perceived the latest UN resolution as a litmus test for Israeli resolve in the city. He
not only believed that internationalization would be a threat to Israels independence,
but feared that it would encourage calls emanating from the UN to repatriate
Palestinian Arab refugees.256 As he wrote in his diary: If we cause the failure of
the UN resolution here, the issue of the borders will be no more and we will not be
required to accept refugees. Our success on the question of Jerusalem resolves all
international problems surrounding Israel.257
Ben-Gurion announced that Jerusalem is an integral part of the State of Israel
and its eternal capital. No United Nations vote will ever change this fact.258
Following the Prime Ministers lead, the Knesset voted on December 13, 1949 to
officially declare Jerusalem Israels capital and accelerated the transfer of
government offices to the city.
Ben-Gurions defiance of UN Resolution 303 was not merely a stubborn act of
bravado, but a calculation based both on the understandings arrived at with King
Abdullah and on recent actions by the United States and Britain. Both of those
countries had voted with Israel against UN Resolution 303. Since the summer, the
US State Departments policy regarding Jerusalem was that a corpus separatum
was unrealistic as it could not be implemented by the United Nations against the
wishes of Israel and Jordan without the use of substantial forces.259 Washington
now backed a Conciliation Commission plan for limited internationalization that
would accept Israels control of West Jerusalem and Jordans control of East
Jerusalem.260 Britain had recognized Israel, now considered it a friendly country,
and was backing the Jordanian-Israeli understandings regarding Jerusalem and
Palestine in general. The United States and Britain, along with the Soviet Union,
abstained from the subsequent December 20 vote by the UN Trusteeship Council
calling for the removal of Israeli government offices from Jerusalem.261
To the Israeli government it was clear that it could proceed with its plans to
settle Jerusalem and establish the city as the capital of Israel for, without the backing
of the major UN powers, the organizations resolutions would not be enforced.
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Conclusion
This study has offered a perspective on the fall of Arab West Jerusalem different
from the conventional Zionist version mentioned in the introduction. While tracing
the Zionist conquest, it has endeavored to center events around the local Palestinian
Arab population and their neighbourhoods.
To sum up, it can be said that initial acts of hostility by Palestinian Arabs in
Jerusalem in late 1947 were intended more to disrupt implementation of the partition
plan than to enter into a war with the Zionists. Palestinian Arabs, including the
wealthy ones, only fled West Jerusalem after an intensive campaign by the Zionist
forces to drive them out. There is no record of Arab leaders calling on Palestinian
Arabs in West Jerusalem to flee; only entreaties and orders to stay put.
Jerusalem was the site of some of the most bitter fighting in 1948, which resulted
in thousands of Jewish and Arab casualties. As elsewhere in Palestine, Zionist
forces were better prepared than those of the Palestinian Arabs. The Zionist soldiers
far outnumbered those of the Arabs, even after May when the neighboring Arab
countries entered the war. Early on, unable to conquer the well-fortified Jewish
settlements, the Palestinian Arab irregulars attempted to sever supply lines to Jewish
Jerusalem. A sweeping Zionist offensive then cleared practically all the Palestinian
Arabs out of the Jerusalem corridor, and subsequently out of West Jerusalem. It
was during this offensive that Irgun and Lehi fighters perpetrated the Deir Yasin
massacre, for which the Haganahs role must also be called into question. The
massacre precipitated the flight of many more Arab civilians and, with the fall of
Qatamon, few remained in West Jerusalem.
Colluding with the departing British military, the Zionist forces were able to quickly
occupy and consolidate the British positions in West Jerusalem on May 14, 1948, the
date Ben-Gurion declared Israels independence. While Jewish Agency leaders had
previously muted their hopes of including all of Jerusalem in a Jewish state, with the
wars outbreak they made an intensive effort to conquer the rest of the city. Fierce
defense by Palestinian Arab irregulars and the Arab Legions entrance into the Old
City thwarted their plans, but the Legion did not challenge Israeli control over West
Jerusalem. In fact, King Abdullah had concluded a secret agreement with the Zionist
leadership to divide Palestine between them along the lines of the partition plan.
Jerusalem was the only missing link in their understandings, which led to the king
reluctantly committing his troops there. Despite the fact that the Arab Legions chances
of a successful invasion of West Jerusalem were good, King Abdullahand the
United States and Britain had no intention of allowing such an eventuality. A
truce, imposed after heavy American and British pressure, resulted in the Israeli
forces transporting more troops and massive amounts of weapons into Jerusalem.
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The Zionist authorities were quick to populate each of the evacuated Arab
neighbourhoods in West Jerusalem with Jews, not with the intention of providing
temporary shelter, but to permanently Israelize all occupied territory. The Israeli
government, encouraged by the UNs ineffectuality in enforcing its resolutions,
drove home its position on Jerusalem by declaring the city the eternal capital of the
State of Israel.
Only a few hundred non-Jews remained in West Jerusalem: those in the divided
village of Beit Safafa and those who had been concentrated in Baq'a. The rest were
refugees. In the Jerusalem sub-district under Israeli control, Zionist forces had
demolished 37 of 41 Arab villages.262 They had driven over 60,000 Palestinian
Arabs from West Jerusalem and its immediate environs.263
Scholars and activists have waged endless debates on whether the dimensions
of the Palestinian refugee problem are attributable to a conscious Zionist plan.
While scholars have proven the existence of such plans, perhaps the best evidence
of Zionist intentions is Israels refusal to allow the return of refugees. To this day,
not one Palestinian Arab refugee has returned to his or her home in West Jerusalem.
Endnotes
Thanks to the projects supervisor, Salim Tamari, and the other co-researchers: Rochelle Davis, Dalia
Habash, and Terry Rempel. Thanks also to Josh Block, Munir Fakher al-Din, and Kamal Ja'fari for
their assistance, and to my mother, Abigail Krystall, for her assiduous editing. I am grateful to Michael
Dumper, Norman Finkelstein and Yifat Susskind for their comments on an earlier draft. The support
of my co-workers at the AICs Project for Palestinian Residency Rights ProjectIngrid Jaradat
Gassner, Abeer Abu Khdeir, Muhammad Jaradat, Fu'ad Abu Raya, and Buthaina Darwishwas a
sine qua non for this research. Special thanks to the interviewees, particularly Tikva Honig-Parnass,
who has the courage to look back with honesty and to use the knowledge thus gained to arm herself
in the fight for a just future for Palestinians and Israelis alike.
1
Banks, Torn Country, p. 24. Banks description of pre-1948 Jerusalem is as follows: Then as now,
Jerusalem was divided into the Old City to the east and the new, western sector, which also extended
to the south, known as Jewish Jerusalem.
2
Dumper, The Politics of Jerusalem since 1967, p. 67.
The German Colony, originally settled by the German Templers sect in the nineteenth century,
retained the name even after it became a predominantly Arab neighbourhood.
3
The Greek Colony is so called because the nucleus of the quarter was built by Greeks. The name
remained even after it became a largely Arab neighbourhood.
4
5
6
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Bilby, New Star in the Middle East, p. 196.

Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, Cmd. 5479, Chapter XII, Paragraphs 10 and 12, cited in
127
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128
JERUSALEM 1948
Bovis, The Jerusalem Question, p. 23.

7
Simons, International Proposals, p. 83.
Hadawi, Loss of a Heritage, p. 141. According to Palestinian geographer Khalil Tufakji, quoted in
the Jerusalem Post of June 2, 1995, the 15.21 percent of land owned by other residents was Christian
church land.
9
10
11
Golani, Zionism Without Zion, p. 43.
12
Ibid. p. 43.
13
14
Francis Ofner, December 1947: From the Notes of a Journalist, Jerusalem Post, December 14th, 1990.
15
Khalidi, The Arab Perspective, p. 121.
16
Ibid. p. 121.
17
Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan, p. 617.
18
Ibid. p. 217.
19
Ibid. p. 239.
20
Shlaim, The Debate about 1948, p. 299.
21
22
Al-'Arif, Nakbat Filastin, pp. 17 and 39, 48.
23
Flapan, Birth of Israel, p. 190.
24
Lorch, The Edge of the Sword, p. 43.
25
26
Flapan, Birth of Israel, p. 194.
27
Shlaim, The Debate about 1948, p. 293.
28
Pappe, Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, p. 7; Shlaim, The Debate about 1948, p. 293.
Neff, Fallen Pillars, p. 50, UN Resolution 181 [II] barely attained the requisite two-thirds majority
with a vote of 33 members in favor and 13 against.
29
30
Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem, p.56; Interview, Abdullah Budeiri.
Cunningham Papers, box 2, file 3. Middle East Center, St. Anthonys College (Oxford), cited in
Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe, p. 35.
31
32
Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, p. 33. Although Morris implies that these
operations were unauthorized, he provides no evidence to support this claim.
33
Flapan, Birth of Israel, p. 95; al-'Arif, Nakbat Filastin, p. 77.
34
Interview, Abdullah Budeiri. He had served with the Arab Legion from 1939 to 1946.
For figures on Arab and Zionist troop strength, see Appendices VIII, IX-A, and IX-B of Khalidi,
Walid, From Haven to Conquest, pp. 858-71.
35
36
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Interview, Abdullah Budeiri.
37
Ibid.
38
Interview, Ali Hassan Elyan.
39
Al 'Arif, Nakbat Filastin, pp. 29-30.
40
Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, p. 16.
128
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129
41
Mattar, Mufti of Jerusalem, p. 127.
Ben Gurions War Diary, p 169, entry for 21 January, 1948, cited in Morris, The Birth of the
Palestinian Refugee Problem, p. 23.
42
43
Interview, AR.
44
45
Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem, p. 62.
46
Khalidi, Walid, From Haven to Conquest, pp. 858-71.
Flapan, Birth of Israel, p. 196; Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan, p. 217. The estimates are
based on Walid Khalidis calculations cited by Flapan, which include both fully mobilized and secondline troops in the settlements, Gadna youth battalions, home guard and Irgun and Lehi fighters.
Shlaim writes that Ben-Gurion concentrated one-third of the Israeli forces in and around Jerusalem
because he considered the city to be so vital in the war with the Arab armies.
47
48
Interview, Hagit Shlonsky.
49
Interview, Tikva Honig-Parnass.
50
Golani, Zionism Without Zion, pp. 45-46.
Cunningham Papers, box 2, file 3. Middle East Center, St. Anthonys College (Oxford), cited in
51
52
Flapan, The Birth of Israel, p. 95.
53
Al-Arif, Nakbat Filistin, pp. 72, 133.
Of those interviewed for this study, two ex-fighters during the conflict in Jerusalemone Jew and
one Arabare both convinced of British partiality towards the Zionist troops. The Arab, a former
officer of the British Mandates Palestine Police in Jerusalem, cited the Jewish Settlement Police
(JSP) as an example of institutionalized favoritism. (Interview, AR) He noted that, as a matter of
policy, the British trained Jewish police officers to form the JSP, whose role was to guard the settlements,
and that these officers closely coordinated their actions with the British police. No such aid was
provided to Palestinian Arabs to help them defend their villages and neighbourhoods. Former Haganah
soldier Tikva Honig-Parnass narrated a couple of personal experiences that to her symbolize the
British armys partiality to the Haganah:
54
Early on in the fighting in Jerusalem, I was part of a reserve unit that was sent on
various assignments. During one assignment I went with a group of other girls to
Hebrew University on Mount Scopus. Our assignment was to retrieve weapons from
an arms cache in the natural science laboratory. We were given a few dissembled
Sten [machine] guns, part of which we put in our shirts. We got on a bus. I was the
last one to board and I paid the driver. When I went to sit down, three British soldiers
on the bus were laughing at me. And then the whole bus was laughing. I didnt know
why, until I realized that part of a Sten was protruding from the side of my shirt. The
British soldiers did not do anything to me. If I had been an Arab, they would surely
have arrested me.
Another time I went to Shimon HaTzadik (a Jewish neighbourhood in East
Jerusalem) to pick up a part of a Sten gun and had to walk past a British checkpoint.
I was scared to death. I told the soldiers that I was a nurse from Hadassah Hospital
and wanted them to accompany me to a Jewish neighbourhood. They laughed at me
and said we know who you are, then sent me on my way.
55
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JERUSALEM 1948
56
Golan, Shinui hamapa hayishuvit, p. 11.
57
58
Khalidi, All That Remains, pp. 301-302.
Sheikh Badr was the village located closest to the city, adjacent to Romeima, of which not a house
remains and where the Knesset, the Israeli parliament building, now stands.
59
Galili Papers, Protocol of the Meeting on Arab Affairs, 1-2 January 1948, pp. 12-23, cited in
60
61
Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem S25/4013, cited in Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe, p.
98.
62
Central Zionist Archives S25-4013, Summary of Information about Hotel Semiramis...in Qatamon,
the Arab division of the Jewish Agency Political Department, 8 January 1948, cited in Morris, The
Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, p. 50.
63
64
Sakakini, Jerusalem and I, p. 111.
65
Karmi, The 1948 Exodus, p. 35.
66
67
Interview, Y. Kalouti.
68
Ben-Gurion, War Diaries, 15/1/48, p. 156, cited in Flapan, The Birth of Israel, p. 92.
69
Central Zionist Archives, January 1948 SHY reports, cited in Golan, Shinui hamapa hayishuvit, p.
15. SHY is an acronym for Sherut Yediot, the Haganah s intelligence service.
70
71
72
73
Ben-Gurion, War Diary, Vol. 1, entry dated 7 February, 1948, cited in Masalha, Expulsion of the
Palestinians, p. 180.
74
75
Gabbay, A Political Study of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, p. 66.
76
De Azcarate, Mission in Palestine, p. 22.
77
Al-'Arif Nakbat Filastin, p. 117.
Flapan, The Birth of Israel, p. 43. According to Flapan, the siege of Jerusalem prompted Eliyahu
Sasson, the Jewish Agency expert on Arab affairs, and Chaim Berman, secretary of the political
department, to forward a plan of compromise with the Arabs in Palestine. Ben-Gurion rejected their
plan, relying instead on his understandings with King Abdullah and opting for an aggressive policy
towards the Palestinian Arabs.
78
79
Walid Khalidi, in the early 1960s, was the first scholar to draw the link between Plan Dalet and the
pre-meditated expulsion of thousands of Palestinians from the Jerusalem corridor and elsewhere in
Palestine. See Khalidi, Walid, Plan Dalet Revisited, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol XVIII, No 1,
Autumn 1988, pp. 3-70.
80
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81
82
The Palmach was the Haganahs elite striking force.
83
130
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131
84
Ben Gurion, War Diary, Vol. 1, entry dated 6 February, 1948, p. 211, cited in Masalha, Expulsion of
the Palestinians, p. 180.
85
86
Weinstock, Zionism, p. 237; Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem, p. 246.
87
Al-Qawuqji, Memoirs, entry dated 6 April, 1948, p. 41.
88
Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, p. 38; Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe,
p. 47.
89
90
Weinstock, Zionism, p. 235.
91
Jabotinsky Archives, Tel Aviv, 1/10-4K. Cited in Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe, p. 48.
92
Ibid. p. 48.
93
Kurzman, Genesis, p. 173.
94
Ibid. p. 173.
95
De Reynier, A Jerusalem, Editions de la Baconniere, Neuchatel, Switzerland, 1950, cited in Cattan,

The Palestine Question, p. 252.
96
97
Banks, Torn Country, pp. 56-57.
Weinstock, Zionism, p. 235; Kurzman, Genesis, p. 178. According to an April 14, 1998 lecture at
Columbia University by Professor Saleh Abdel Jawad of Bir Zeit University, several villagers,
particularly women and children, were killed by the Palmach mortar shells as they fled from the
village.
98
99
Banks, Torn Country, p. 57.
100
The number of villagers killed in Deir Yasin is subject to dispute. The long accepted death toll has
been that reported in the New York Times of April 13, 1948: 254 persons. Professors from Bir Zeit
University have recently revised these figures based upon research involving interviews with survivors
of the massacre. After comparing the names of those who lived in the village with the names of those
who survived, this research concludes that approximately 120 persons were killed.
101
Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem, p. 274. The figures in brackets are in the original text and
apparently indicate the age of the children.
102
103
Ibid. p. 275.
104
105
No Deportations, Evacuations, Hadashot, January 1, 1988, cited in Finkelstein, Image and Reality
of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, p. 65.
Dossier 179/110/17/GS, submitted by Richard Catling to Sir Henry Gurney, cited in Collins and
Lapierre, O Jerusalem, p. 276.
106
107
Ha'aretz, 25 April 1993, cited in Finkelstein, Image and Reality p. 189.
De Reynier, A Jerusalem, section on Deir Yasin translated by Institute for Palestine Studies and
reprinted in Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest, p. 764.
108
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109
110
Banks, Torn Country, p. 57.
111
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132
JERUSALEM 1948
112
Ibid. p. 280.
113
114
Kurzman, Dan,Genesis, 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War, p. 181.
115
116
117
Kurzman, Genesis, p. 198, (note: in version published by De Capo Press, New York, 1970).
118
119
120
121
Sakakini, Jerusalem and I, p. 118.
122
De Reynier, A Jerusalem, translated and reprinted in Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest, p. 765.
123
124
125
Ibid, p. 113.
126
127
Interview, Ali Hassan Elyan and Ahmad Salman.
128
David Kroyanker, walking tour of Talbiyeh.
129
130
Ibid. p. 66.
131
132
De Reynier, A Jerusalem, p. 129, cited in Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrohpe, p. 100.
Count Bernadotte-Progress Report UN Doc A/648 p. 47, cited in Cattan, The Palestine Question,
p. 71.
133
134
Interview, Hagit Shlonsky. Looting by victorious Zionist troopsand by Jewish residentswas a

widespread phenomenon, not only in Qatamon and the other occupied Arab neighbourhoods, but
throughout Palestine. Tom Segev quotes the Israeli writer Moshe Smilanski: The urge to grab has
seized everyone. Individuals, groups and communities, men, women and children, all fell on the
spoils. Doors, windows, lintels, bricks, roof-tiles, floor-tiles, junk and machine parts... (1949, p. 70.)
As an example of how much Arab property was looted by Israelisand, by extension, how small an
effort the Israeli authorities made to protect the propertySegev states that more than 50,000 Arab
homes had been abandoned, but only 509 carpets reached the Custodians warehouses. (1949, p.
71.) Palestinian Arabs also thoroughly looted Jewish convoys and settlements when they succeeded
in overcoming them, as in the case of Neve Ya'acov described by John Bagot Glubb (A Soldier, p.
110.)
135
136
Rose, Armenians of Jerusalem, pp. 194-195.
Sharif Kanaana, in his book Still on Vacation! (p. 108), places the fall of Arab West Jerusalem in
the framework of what he terms the Zionists Maxi-Massacre Pattern in their conquest of large
Palestinian cities. According to this pattern, Zionist attacks produced flight and demoralization. A
nearby massacre resulted in panic and further flight which greatly facilitated the occupation of the
city and its surrounding towns and villages.
137
138
CHAP4.PM5
Golan, Shinui hamapa hayishuvit, p. 27; Rose, Armenians of Jerusalem, p. 199.
132
8/22/102, 1:55 PM
133
139
Rose, Armenians of Jerusalem, p. 200.
140
Al-Qawuqji, Memoirs, entries of 3/5/48 and 4/5/48.
141
142
Bovis, The Jerusalem Question, p. 52; De Azcarate, Mission in Palestine, p. 13.
143
Flapan, The Birth of Israel, p. 179.
144
145
146
Kurzman, Genesis, p. 393; Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem, p. 372.
Aviva Bar-Am, Every House a History, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 14, 1990. The Villa Harun al-Rashid
was built in 1926 as two apartments in ornate Thousand and One Nights style by Hana Bisharat,
one of two brothers who owned much property in Talbiyeh. Golda Meir, as the Israeli foreign minister,
lived here in the 1960s. When she learned that UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold was coming
to visit, she directed her security men to remove a sign with the villas name written in Arabic and
English from above the side entrance door, supposedly to hide the fact that the house had belonged to
an Arab.
147
Jerusalem Post, Dec. 14, 1990, Aviva Bar-Am, Every House a History. The Iraqis in question
were likely Iraqi soldiers serving with the Arab Liberation Army.
148
149
150
Ben-Gurion, David, Israel: Years of Challenge, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963, p. 40.
151
Ben-Gurion, Israel: Years of Challenge, p. 41.
Ben-Gurion, When Israel Fought (Hebrew), Tel Aviv, 1975, p. 183, cited in Golani, Zionism
without Zion, p. 47.
152
153
154
CIA Report of 17 May, II, p 5 and BBC Report #49, p. 71. Cited in Palumbo, The Palestinian
Catastrophe, p. 96.
155
156
Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem, p.432.
157
Kurzman, Genesis, pp. 431-432.
158
159
160
161
162
Al-Tal, Catastrophe, Part One, p. 106.
163
Ibid. pp. 115-116.
164
Ibid. p. 151.
165
Ibid. p. 151; Interview, Abdullah Budeiri.
Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem, p. 476; Interview, Abdullah Budeiri. In his book, A Soldier
with the Arabs, Glubb explains that the primary reasons that he did not pursue the attack on Notre
Dame, or West Jerusalem in general, were his troops lack of familiarity with street fighting and his
fear that the Israelis would launch a counteroffensive from Jerusalem towards Amman. These reasons
may be part of the truth. However, since Glubb was not just guided by military considerations alone,
but was answerable to both King Abdullah and London, his rendition is circumspect. It is noteworthy
166
CHAP4.PM5
133
8/22/102, 1:55 PM
134
JERUSALEM 1948
that in his detailed account of the Jerusalem fighting in May and June 1948, Glubb does not once
mention the important role played by Abdullah al-Tal.
167
Morris, '48 and After, p. 11.
168
169
Ibid. p. 247.
170
Al-Tal, Catastrophe, Part One, p.170.
171
De Azcarate, Mission in Palestine, p. 72. De Azcarate provides a detailed eyewitness account of
the surrender of the Jewish Quarter to the Arab Legion.
172
173
Ibid.
174
Al-Tal, Catastrophe, Part One, p. 123; Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem, p. 503.
Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem, p. 507. Britains change of mind was due to pressure from the
US, which was threatening to cut off all economic aid to Englands war-shattered economy.
175
The Burma Road was hastily built by the Haganah to bypass the Arab Legion positions around
Latrun. By this time rifles, machine guns, tanks, field guns, and planes purchased by Israeli agents
were flowing into Israel from Europe. Tikva Honig-Parnass (Interview with author), at the time
stationed with the Palmach in the Jerusalem corridor, remembered that suddenly we felt like a rich
army. Not only did it seem like we had an unlimited supply of weapons, we had enough food and
medicine, too.
176
De Azcarate, Mission in Palestine, p. 99. Whereas the truce clearly allowed the Israeli forces to
improve their positions, it cannot wholly be said to have hindered the Arab Legion from pursuing its
objective for, as has been shown, it had no plan to conquer West Jerusalem.
177
178
Weinstock, Zionism, p. 251.
179
Pappe, Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, p. 79.
180
Mavrides, Jerusalem Diaries, Memorandum 2.
181
Interview, AR.
'Ayn Karim is one of the few villages whose houses largely remain intact. The village is today
populated by Jewish Israelis and is generally considered a very desirable and exclusive place of
residence.
182
183
Khalidi, All That Remains, p. 305.
184
185
Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan, p. 258; Morris, Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, p.
142.
186
187
188
Bilby, New Star, p. 202.
Golani, Zionism without Zion, p. 48. Dov Joseph had been a member of the Jewish Agencys
Popular Transfer Committee which, before 1948, had laid out detailed plans for the expulsion of
Palestinian Arabs from the future Jewish state. (Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians, p. 93.)
189
CHAP4.PM5
190
Golani, Zionism without Zion, p. 48.
191
Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion, p 823, cited in Flapan, The Birth of Israel, p. 48.
192
Ibid. p. 48.
134
8/22/102, 1:55 PM
135
193
Cattan, The Palestine Question, p. 253.
Israel has not, to this day, canceled the state of emergency, which provides legal justification for
detention without trial and military censorship of the press.
194
Proceeds from these transactions, minus legal and administrative expenses, are to be held in a
special fund, presumably for the absentees, until the state of emergency is declared over.
195
196
197
Ibid. p. 35.
198
Ibid. p. 37.
199
Ibid. p. 38.
200
Ibid. p. 40.
201
Ibid. p. 41.
202
Ibid. p. 44.
203
Ibid. pp. 44-45 and 64.
204
Segev, 1949, p.70.
205
Rose, Armenians of Jerusalem, pp. 207-214.
206
Interview, Hannah Levy.
207
Ibid.
208
209
Segev, 1949, p. 88.
210
Ibid. p. 88.
211
Cattan, Jerusalem, p. 61.
212
UN Document A/648, p. 14.
Washington National Record Center, Suitland, Maryland, RG84, cited in Palumbo, The Palestinian
Catastrophe, p. 101.
213
214
215
Plascov, The Palestinian Refugees, p. 37.
216
Perowne, The One Remains, p.16.
217
Ibid. p. 22.
218
219
Segev, 1949, p. 14.
220
221
Ibid. p. 383.
222
Golani, Zionism without Zion, p. 49.
223
224
Jordan-Israel armistice agreement, Article II, Section 2, cited in Weinstock, Zionism, p. 240.
Transjordan became Jordan, with its former kingdom on the River Jordans East Bank supplemented
by the Palestinian West Bank.
225
CHAP4.PM5
226
227
Pappe, Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, p. 195.
228
Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan, p. 538; Pappe, Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, p. 197.
135
8/22/102, 1:55 PM
136
229
JERUSALEM 1948
Mavrides, Jerusalem Diaries, Memorandum 4.
Perowne, The One Remains, p. 22. See Perowne for a detailed description of East Jerusalem life in
the early 1950s.
230
231
232
233
Interview, Ahmad Salman.
234
235
Ibid. p. 222.
236
Official Records of the 3rd session of the General Assembly, Ad Hoc Political Committee, 1949,
Part II, p. 223, cited in Cattan, Jerusalem, p. 59.
237
238
Part II, pp. 286-7 (emphasis added), Cited Ibid, p. 60.
Part II, p. 286, cited in Cattan, Jerusalem, p. 60.
239
240
Neff, Fallen Pillars, p. 133.
Bilby, New Star in the Middle East, p. 194. The four-year plan was presented to the Knesset on
March 8, 1949.
241
242
Central Zionist Archives, letter from Yoseftal to Greenberg, 13/4/49. Cited in Golan, Shinui hamapa
hayishuvit, p. 54; Segev, 1949, p. 78.
243
244
245
Segev, 1949, p. 78.
246
247
Ibid. p. 58.
248
249
250
251
252
Ha'aretz, September 18, 1949.
253
254
Segev, 1949, p. 41.
255
Ibid. p. 41.
256
Shlaim, Collusion, p. 536.
Ben-Gurion, Diary, December 14, 1949, Ben-Gurion Archives, cited in Golani, Zionism Without
Zion, p. 50.
257
258
Golani, Zionism Without Zion, p. 51.
259
Ibid. Neff attributes this shift in US policy as succumbing to both realpolitik and pressure from
Israels American supporters.
260
261
CHAP4.PM5
UN Trusteeship Council Resolution 114 (S-2).
136
8/22/102, 1:55 PM
137
262
Nijim and Bishara, Toward the De-Arabization of Palestine/Israel 1945-1977, p. 58.
263
Hudson, The Transformation of Jerusalem, p. 259.
Bibliography
Books
Al-'Arif, 'Arif, Nakbat Filistin wa al-Firdaus al-Mafqoud 1947-1955 [The Catastrophe of Palestine
and the Lost Paradise 1947-1955], Acre: Dar al-Huda, n.d.
Abu Gharbieh, Bahjat, Fi Khidamm al-nidal al-'arabi al-filastini, mudhakkarat al-munadil Bahjat
Abu Gharbiyah, 1916-1949 [In the Midst of the Struggle for the Arab Palestinian Cause: The
Memoirs of Freedom-Fighter Bahjat Abu Gharbieh, 1916-1949] Beirut: Institute for Palestine
Studies, 1993.
Banks, Lynne Reid, Torn Country: An Oral History of the Israeli War of Independence, New York:
Franklin Watts, 1982.
Bar-Zohar, Michael, Ben-Gurion, Tel Aviv, 1977.
Ben-Gurion, David, Israel: Years of Challenge, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963.
Bilby, Kenneth, New Star in the Middle East, New York: Doubleday & Co, NY, 1950.
Bovis, H Eugene, The Jerusalem Question, 1917-1968, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1971.
Cattan, Henry, Palestine and International Law, The Legal Aspects of the Arab-Israeli Conflict,
London: Longman, 1973.
Cattan, Henry, The Question of Palestine, London: Croom Helm, 1988.
Cattan, Henry, Jerusalem, London: Croom Helm, 1981.
Cohen, Michael J, Palestine to Israel, From Mandate to Independence, London: Frank Cass, 1988.
Collins, Larry and Lapierre, Dominique, O Jerusalem!, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.
De Azcarate, Pablo, Mission in Palestine 1948-1952, Washington D.C.: Middle East Institute, 1966.
De Reynier, Jaques, A Jerusalem un drapeau flottait sur la ligne de feu, Neuchatel, Switzerland:
Editions de la Baconniere, 1950.
Dumper, Michael, The Politics of Jerusalem since 1967, New York: Columbia University Press and
the Institute for Palestine Studies, 1997.
Finkelstein, Norman, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, London: Verso, 1995.
Flapan, Simha, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, London: Croom Helm, 1987.
Gabbay, Rony, A Political Study of the Arab-Jewish Conflict, Geneva: Libraire E. Droz, 1959.
Glubb, John Bagot, A Soldier with the Arabs, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1957.
Hadawi, Sami, Palestine: Loss of a Heritage, Naylor: San Antonio, 1963.
Joseph, Dov, The Faithful City, London: Hogarth Press, 1962.
Kanaana, Sharif, Still on Vacation! The Eviction of the Palestinians in 1948, Jerusalem: The Jerusalem
International Center for Palestinian Studies, 1992.
Khalidi, Walid, From Haven to Conquest, Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1971.
Khalidi, Walid, All That Remains, Washington D.C.: The Institute of Palestine Studies, 1992.
Kurzman, Dan, Genesis 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War, New York: Signet, 1970.
Lorch, Netanel, The Edge of the Sword: Israels War of Independence 1947-1949, New York: Putnams,
1961.
Masalha, Nur, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of Transfer in Zionist Political Thought
1882-1948, Washington D.C.: The Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992.
Mattar, Philip, The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Palestinian National
Movement, New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.
CHAP4.PM5
137
8/22/102, 1:55 PM
138
JERUSALEM 1948
Mavrides, C.X., Jerusalem Diaries, Nes Zion Newsletter, 1948, translated from the Greek for Institute
of Jerusalem Studies by Dr. Yani Tleel.
Morris, Benny, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987.
Morris, Benny, 1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
Neff, Donald, Fallen Pillars:US Policy Towards Palestine and Israel since 1945, Washington D.C.:
Institute for Palestine Studies, 1995.
Nijim, Basheer K, ed. and Muammar, Bishara, researcher, Toward the De-Arabization of Palestine/
Israel 1945-1977, Iowa: Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development,
Kendall/Hunt, 1984.
Palumbo, Michael, The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from their Homeland,
London: Faber and Faber, 1987.
Pappe, Ilan, Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1948-1951, New York: St. Martins Press, 1988.
Perowne, Stuart, The One Remains, New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1955.
Plascov, Avi, The Palestinian Refugees in Jordan 1948-1957, London: Frank Cass, 1981.
Rose, John H. Melkon, Armenians of Jerusalem: Memories of Life in Palestine, New York: Radcliffe
Press, 1993.
Sakakini, Hala, Jerusalem and I: A Personal Record, Jordan: Economic Press Co., 1990.
Segev, Tom, 1949: The First Israelis, New York: Macmillan Press, 1986.
Simons, Chaim, International Proposals to Transfer Arabs from Palestine, 1895-1947: A Historical
Survey, New Jersey: Ktav Publishing House, 1988.
Shlaim, Avi, Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of
Palestine, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.
Al-Tal, Abdullah, The Catastrophe of Palestine, Acre: Dar al-Jalil, n.d.
Weinstock, Nathan, Zionism: The False Messiah, London: Ink Links, 1979.
Articles
Bar-Am, Aviva, Every House a History, Jerusalem Post, September 27, 1991.
Golani, Matti, Zionism Without Zion: The Jerusalem Question, 1947-1949, Journal of Israeli History,
Vol. 16, No. 1 (1995), pp. 39-52.
Hudson, Michael C, The Transformation of Jerusalem 1917-1987 AD, in Jerusalem in History,
edited by KJ Asali, Olive Branch Press, 1990.
Ofner, Francis, December, 1947: From the Notes of a Journalist, Jerusalem Post, December 14,
1990.
Karmi, Ghada, The 1948 Exodus: A Family Story, Journal of Palestine Studies XXIII, No. 2 (Winter
1994), pp. 31-40.
Khalidi, Walid, The Arab Perspective, in The End of the Palestine Mandate, edited by Wm Roger
Louis and Robert W. Stookey, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986.
Khalidi, Walid, Plan Dalet Revisited, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, Autumn
1988,
pp. 3-70
Khalidi, Walid, Islam, The West and Jerusalem, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and Center
for Muslim Christian Understanding, Georgetown University (Distributed in Palestine by
the Institute for Jerusalem Studies), 1996.
Kirschner, Isabel, The West Jerusalem File, Jerusalem Report, November 2, 1995, pp. 24-27.
Al-Qawuqji, Fauzi, Memoirs, 1948 (Part One), Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 1, No. 4, Summer
1972.
Shlaim, Avi, The Debate about 1948, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3,
pp. 287-304, 1995.
CHAP4.PM5
138
8/22/102, 1:55 PM
139
Unpublished Material
Golan, Arnon, Shinui hamapa hayishuvit b'azorim sh'nitshu alyaday hauchlusia ha'aravit b'shetach
bo kama medinat yisrael, 1948-1950 [Change in the Settlement Map in the Regions Abandoned
by the Arab Population in the Area in which the State of Israel was Established, 1948-1950],
Ph.D. Thesis, Hebrew University, 1993.
Interviews
Abdallah Budeiri with the author, Jerusalem, June 7, 1997.
Ali Hassan Elyan with the author, Beit Safafa, May 28, 1997.
Tikva Honig-Parnass with the author, Jerusalem, May 13, 1997.
Y. Kalouti (first name withheld by request) with Rochelle Davis, Jerusalem, May 30, 1995.
Hannah Levy with the author, Musrara, Jerusalem, May 7, 1997.
AR with the author, Bethlehem, June 5, 1997.
Ahmad Salman with the author, Beit Safafa, May 28, 1997.
Hagit Shlonsky with the author, May 1, 1997.
Other
Walking tour of Talbiyeh with David Kroyanker, May 24, 1997.
CHAP4.PM5
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140
JERUSALEM 1948
Map 3
Fighting and Operations in Jerusalem up until May 15, 1948

April 13, 1948:
Hadassah convoy
attacked
May 14, 1948

Operation: Kilshon North
Romema
Givat Shaul
March 17, 1948

Schneller Orphanage
seized by Haganah
Mt. Scopus
Camp
Bukharan
Quarter
Sheikh
Jarrah
Geula
Ayn
Karim
February 12-13,
1948 Haganah raids
Sheikh Jarrah
Wadi
el-Joz
Mekor Baruch
Mt. of Olives
Beit Hakerem
Old
City
Yemin
Moshe
Rehavia
Monastery
of the Cross
Silwan
Talbiya
Bayit Vegan
May 13, 1948:

British positions seized
by Jewish forces after
evacuation, within framework
of Operation Shefifon
January 24 and 29, 1948.

Haganah raids Shahin hill
Greek
Colony
Abu Tor
Qatamon
Baqa
March 30-April 30, 1948.
Qatamon area captured
by Etzioni forces
Malha
Mekor Hayim
Legend
Talpiot
Arab neighborhoods & villages

Jewish neighborhoods
Mixed Jewish and Arab
neighborhoods
British security zone
Beit Safafa
Jewish raids at start of war

Operation Yevusi
Operation Kilshon
Palestinian Operations
Parameters of Military
Confrontation May 14-15
Ramat
Rahel
250 500 m
Sur
Bahir
Adapted from Dan Bahat, The Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem. NY: Simon and Schuster,
1990, and Bahjat Abu Gharbiyyeh, Fi khidam an-Nidal, 1916-1949. Beirut: IPS, 1993.
CHAP4.PM5
140
8/22/102, 1:55 PM
HOUSE OF MAPS
Ramallah 02-2987088
Mobile 050-503518
P.O. Box 24398 Jerusalem
141
Map 4
Fighting and Operations in Jerusalem after 15 May, 1948

May 19, 1948:
Arab Legion captures
Sheikh Jarrah and fails
at attempts to penetrate
Jewish Sector
Bukharan
Quarter
May 19, 1948:
Gadna forces
block breach
attempt by
Arab Legion convoys
Romema
Givat Shaul
Mekor Baruch
Kiryat Moshe
Mt. Scopus
Sheikh Jarrah
July 16, 1948:

Operation Kedem---Irgun
ordered to withdraw from its
hold on New Gate
Mea Shearim
Mahane Yehuda
July 9-19, 1948:

Heavy battles
Bab es-Sahira
Old City
May 17-18, 1948:

Notre Dame captured
by Israeli Forces
Mt. of Olives
Beit Hakerem
May 13-28, 1948:

Jewish Quarter falls
to Arab forces
Rehavia
Monastery
of the Cross
July 16
1948
Talbiya
Bayit Vegan
July 16, 1948:

Operation Kedem
failure to breach Old
City because of foiled
bomb attempt
July 10, 1948:

Arabs displaced from
Ayn Karim following
capture of Khirbet
el-Hamam
Qatamon
Silwan
Yemin
Moshe
May 17-19, 1948:

Arab forces Capture
Mt. Zion
Abu Tor
Greek
Colony
Baqa
Malha
Mekor Hayim
July 14-15 1948:

Irgun forces capture
village of Malha in
two attacks
August 17-18, 1948:

Government House
attack fails
Talpiot
Beit Safafa
May 22-25, 1948:

Kibbutz Ramat Rahel
changes hands amid
heavy battles with
Egyptian forces
Israel-Jordan Armistice Line

Parameters of Military Confrontations May 14-15
Palestinian and Arab Operations
Israeli Army Operations (May 15-June 10, 1948)
October 21-22, 1948:

Operation Yekev. Although
attack failed south of railway
line, railway was included
in Israel under armistice
agreement with Jordan
Sharafat
Legend
Israeli Army Operations (July 9-19, 1948)

Israeli Army Operations in August 1948
Ramat
Rahel
HOUSE OF MAPS
Ramallah 02-2987088
Mobile 050-503518
P.O. Box 24398 Jerusalem
Adapted from Dan Bahat, The Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem. NY: Simon and Schuster,
1990, and Bahjat Abu Gharbiyyeh, Fi khidam an-Nidal, 1916-1949. Beirut: IPS, 1993.
CHAP4.PM5
141
8/22/102, 1:55 PM
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8Chapter

The Fall of the New City

The United Nations resolved to partition Palestine and to internationalize

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

As an introduction, it is important to place 1948 Arab West Jerusalem in the

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

Outbreak of Fighting in Jerusalem

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

groups achieved notable operational coordination. In a dispatch to London on

The Initial Evacuation of Arab Neighbourhoods

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

Plan Dalet and Operation Nachshon

The Deir Yasin Massacre

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

The Zionist Conquest and Looting of Qatamon

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

by John Rose, an Armenian Jerusalemite who remained in the neighbourhood:

derelict houses. At night the wind howled and the banging of

The British Withdrawal and the Israeli Declaration of

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

abandoning, the execution of this plan in deference to our telephone

The Arab Legion

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

Israels Expropriation and Settling of Arab Neighbourhoods in

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

It is not impossible... that we will be able to conquer the way to the

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

to remain in the Palestinian homes they had broken into.203

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

economic refugees, and dwellers in frontier villages.216 Many official refugees

Armistice: Israel and Jordans Division of Jerusalem

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

The Israeli Transfer of Government to West Jerusalem

Israels UN representative repeatedly reassured the General Assembly that his

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

the Governments concerned to take refuge, with regard to the

Jerusalem as Israels Capital

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

an international army and take Jerusalem by force. To this, Ben-Gurion said,

THE FALL OF THE NEW CITY 1947-1950

Dumper, The Politics of Jerusalem since 1967, p. 67.

Bilby, New Star in the Middle East, p. 196.

Bovis, The Jerusalem Question, p. 23.

Simons, International Proposals, p. 83.

Bovis, The Jerusalem Question, p. 50.

Bovis, The Jerusalem Question, p. 60.

Golani, Zionism Without Zion, p. 43.

Bovis, The Jerusalem Question, p. 60.

Khalidi, The Arab Perspective, p. 121.

Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan, p. 617.

Shlaim, The Debate about 1948, p. 299.

Khalidi, The Arab Perspective, p. 118.

Al-'Arif, Nakbat Filastin, pp. 17 and 39, 48.

Flapan, Birth of Israel, p. 190.

Lorch, The Edge of the Sword, p. 43.

Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan, p. 239.